


Well, this calls for a toast

by cupcakeb



Category: Elite (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Ficlet Collection, basically every single trope imaginable, glossary in ch1!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:08:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 35,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupcakeb/pseuds/cupcakeb
Summary: #22:Rebeka/Nano - pre-canon run in while he works for Sandra#21:Carla/Polo/Lu - Season 1 trio rewrite#20:Carla/Samuel - “Are you planning to stay glued to my side the whole day?”#19:Rebeka/Ander - "I'm pretty sure your mom hates me."** a collection of short(er) stories, mostly inspired by prompts I got. Multiple pairings! **
Relationships: Carla Rosón Caleruega/Leopoldo "Polo" Benavent Villada, Carla Rosón Caleruega/Samuel García Domínguez, Carla Rosón Carleruega/Guzmán Nunier Osuna, Lucrecia "Lu" Montesinos Hendrich/Guzmán Nunier Osuna, Lucrecia "Lu" Montesinos Hendrich/Leopoldo "Polo" Benavent Villada, Lucrecia "Lu" Montesinos Hendrich/Valerio Montesinos Hendrich, Rebeca "Rebe" de Bormujo Ávalos & Ander Muñoz, Rebeca "Rebe" de Bormujo Ávalos/Fernando "Nano" García Domínguez, Rebeca "Rebe" de Bormujo Ávalos/Lucrecia "Lu" Montesinos Hendrich, Rebeca "Rebe" de Bormujo Ávalos/Valerio Montesinos Hendrich
Comments: 177
Kudos: 216





	1. Lu/Valerio - “What would you do if I didn’t come back?”

**Author's Note:**

> This is gonna be a place for me to dump some of the shorter things I write! Feel free to send me prompts [on tumblr](http://cupcakeb.tumblr.com/) or in the comments below.
> 
> Chapter glossary: 
> 
> Ch1: [Lu/Valerio - “What would you do if I didn’t come back?”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/60592327)  
> Ch2: [Carla/Samuel - “How do you sleep at night?”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/60599674#workskin)  
> Ch3: [Carla/Guzmán - “You don’t love him.” “Oh, and you do?”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/60618127#workskin)  
> Ch4: [Rebeka/Valerio - “Should you be drinking that much?”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/60646849#workskin)  
> Ch5: [Carla/Samuel - "Which part of me wasn't enough?"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/60665080#workskin)  
> Ch6: [Lu/Guzmán - "You’re so much smarter than this.”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/60722176#workskin)  
> Ch7: [Carla/Samuel - “Hasn’t this addiction done enough damage already?”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/60924802#workskin)  
> Ch8: [Rebeka/Valerio - "Can you really blame me?"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/61003744#workskin)  
> Ch9: [Carla/Guzman - "You shouldn't have done that."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/61154737#workskin)  
> Ch10: [Rebeka/Valerio - "I know you're willing to cheat on her."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/61261420#workskin)  
> Ch11: [Lu/Valerio - Jealous!Valerio](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/61497175#workskin)  
> Ch12: [Marina/not!dying - “Do you remember?”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/62114479#workskin)  
> Ch13: [Rebeka/Nano - "Leave my brother alone."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/62174281#workskin)  
> Ch14: [Lu/Polo - "Did you know she's cheating on you?"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/62344096#workskin)  
> Ch15: [Rebeka/Valerio - one of them getting the other off drugs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/62395192#workskin)  
> Ch16: [Carla/Polo - catching up after years of not talking](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/62582785#workskin)  
> Ch17: [Rebeka/Lu - being each other's rebound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/62602627#workskin)  
> Ch18: [Lu/Polo - running into each other at brunch after a hookup](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/63669004#workskin)  
> Ch19: [Rebeka/Ander - "I'm pretty sure your mom hates me."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/66624238)  
> Ch20: [Carla/Samuel - “Are you planning to stay glued to my side the whole day?”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/66718636)  
> Ch21: [Carla/Polo/Lu - Season 1 trio rewrite](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/70990317)  
> Ch22: [Rebeka/Nano - pre-canon run in while he works for Sandra](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021405/chapters/71980974)

Truth is, Lu doesn’t know how she let herself end up here. At this random apartment Val's living in, with his roommate asleep next door, sitting on the edge of his unmade bed as they both recover from the desperate kiss they just shared.  
  
This is the absolute dumbest thing she could have done tonight, and she knows it. Her flight to New York leaves tomorrow afternoon, and instead of calling herself a cab and going home straight after the leaving drinks she and Nadia had organized, Valerio had convinced her to go for a nightcap, which turned into more drinks and — well, she’s here now, isn’t she? It’s one, or maybe two o’clock in the morning, and she’s tipsy and Valerio is way too close to her.  
  
If Lu had a dollar for every time she’s ended a night like this, with Val, she could probably pay for her Columbia tuition herself.  
  
“Tell me you don’t want this,” he says, and he’s still breathing hard, which shouldn’t be a turn on for her but somehow just is. Nothing makes her crazier than seeing the pure, unadulterated need in his eyes.  
  
She shakes her head. “I can’t,” she whispers, and he smirks because he knows he’s won.  
  
She’s fairly drunk, and he’s being contrary, and this feels final, somehow. Like they’re either gonna be honest with each other now, or never acknowledge this. Maybe she’s looking for a fight, wants to push him away, but she doesn’t think lies are necessary in order to get her point across — they need to stop doing this, and he must know it, too.  
  
“I’m leaving,” she reminds him. “And then you’ll just be here, alone.”  


“There we go,” he says, standing up and shaking his head. She doesn’t like how mean it sounds, like an accusation. She’s not going to dwell on whatever point he thinks he’s making.  
  
Something inside of Lu snaps. She’s been holding all of this back for months, and suddenly it’s like her lips are moving on their own accord, not giving her a choice to filter her thoughts.  


“I’m not crazy for not fucking up my life by wanting things we can’t give each other, alright?” She knows she’s breathing too fast. Valerio seems to notice that, too. His hands are in his hair, a nervous tic she hasn’t seen on him in years. “I’m gonna go to New York and do whatever I want. And you shouldn’t have to stay here and miss me.”  


He’s right in front of her, then, considering her words. On his knees, like someone begging for scraps. He reaches out and brushes her hair over her shoulder, then rests his hand there. His thumb slips under the strap of her red dress.  
  
“You think I won’t miss you anyway?” Valerio asks, sort of grinning. It’s a mean grin; raw and without any fanfare. “That we won’t miss each other?” She doesn’t say what she’s thinking, which is that they need to get over each other. She needs to look ahead, to make herself forget. “I’m gonna miss the hell out of you.”  
  
Lu holds her breath. Fuck. That feels heavy.  
  
“Val,” she breathes, holding onto his neck without even meaning to. She braces herself for what comes next. “This isn’t going to work.”  


He looks pensive, kind of angry, like he’s done being sad about this and has moved on to aggression. She repeats herself. 

“It won’t work, you can’t change that,” and the look on his face breaks her heart, because she knows she’s breaking his. There are tears in his eyes.

There must be a silver lining to finally having this conversation somewhere, but Lu is currently too wrapped up in holding back tears of her own to find it. 

Valerio sighs. 

“It’s not like you’ll never come back,” he says, petulant. It reminds her of the childhood fights they used to have, her always taking on the role of the older sibling because she was the more responsible one out of the two of them, even back then. 

The person kneeling in front of her seems a lot more mature, but there’s sort of a Peter-Pan-like quality to him that he’s never quite been able to shake. It makes her wish she wasn’t like Wendy; didn’t want grand romantic gestures, and marriage, and children — things he can’t give to her. Makes her wish they were more compatible, in the ways that count, somehow. But maybe, she thinks, if she wasn’t like this, he wouldn’t want her at all, anyway. 

“What would you do if I didn’t come back?”

The look he gives her is meant to enrage her, she’s sure of it. Tonight, though, she’s done being predictable. She’s not gonna let him push her buttons until she relents and gives in to him, no matter how much she wants to. She wants to hear him say it.  
  
“Wait for you to change your mind,” he says, and finally looks up to meet her eyes.  
  
She doesn’t reply, doesn’t know what to say to that. But something must show on her face, because he reaches out a hand and slowly runs it up her cheek, lets it rest in on her neck.  
  
In the grand scheme of things, this just feels like another failed attempt at doing the right thing. Lu is growing increasingly tired of these.  
  
His mouth twitches.  
  
And hey, things are already fucked up beyond repair. One mistake more or less, what does it matter now?  
  
She leans in to kiss him, then, and he grins at her like he already knew she would. 

It’s like he’s got her under some kind of spell; no matter how hard she tries to rationalize this away, to finally stop doing this, she’s absolutely powerless the second she lets her guard down.  
  
Moaning into the kiss, she thinks about how she shouldn’t have allowed herself to have this conversation at all, if she wanted a different outcome.  
  
Lu leaves for New York and somehow convinces herself she’s not waiting for herself to change her mind, too.  
  



	2. Carla/Samuel - “How do you sleep at night?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went with a season two setting because it seemed fitting. My first ever attempt at Carmuel; hope you like it, anon!  
> (hard M rating, FYI)

Carla is really fucking tired of this shit.  
  
Just once, she’d like to get Samuel naked without having to play fight. It’s kind of getting old.

“How do you sleep at night?” Samuel throws in her face, like an accusation, and someone less calculating, less aware of how they come across, might cave and tell him exactly what he wants to hear. But Carla is no fool. 

They’re at his place, his mother absent as usual — at least they’ve got that in common, she thinks bitterly; shitty parents. She’s almost naked, just her lace underwear left on her body, and he’s still wearing jeans. It’s such a Samuel move to have this conversation _now_. It’s one thing to piss her off with this sort of questioning when she’s fully dressed and put together, but to wait until now, when she’s desperate and on the brink of just sitting down in his lap and forcing his hand is cruel.  
  
She could just beg him to fuck her, she thinks, but then again, she’s not the kind of person who begs.

“My sheets are 400 thread count Egyptian cotton and very comfortable, thank you for asking,” she retorts, and she kind of wants to frame the face he pulls, because it should be in the dictionary next to the definition for ‘exasperated’.

He doesn’t ask her again, just sighs that long, dramatic sigh he seems to like so much. Maybe if he did less of that, and put more work into actually putting two and two together, he’d know who killed Marina by now.  
  
Teasing him is kind of fun, has quickly become one of Carla’s favorite pastimes, especially because he can be so gullible; he’s always so quick to believe her. She thinks she’d admire him for it, if it didn’t get him into so much trouble at all times.  
  
It might get her into trouble at some point, too.  
  
The smirk on her lips is second nature, but it’s genuine. She really does want to get him out of these jeans. Grabbing him by the belt loops, she pulls him closer and makes quick work of his zipper. He grabs her wrist, hard, just for a second, like he’s gonna fight her on this, but one look from her has him letting go again. He’s so predictable.  
  
She likes this dominant side of him, even if he tries pretty hard to hide it.  
  
“Are you sure you want to do this?”  
  
If she wasn’t so turned on, she’d probably roll her eyes at him. She needs this bullshit verbal foreplay to end _now_.  
  
“Are you sure you want to keep talking, when you could just be getting naked?”  
  
He laughs, and Carla tries not to smile when she hears it. It’s genuine laughter, kind of too boyish and innocent for the situation they’re in.  
  
She pushes his pants off his hips and smirks when she runs her hand over his boxer briefs.  
  
Samuel had been green behind the ears when they’d first started doing this, but he’s a quick learner, an eager student, if you will. What he lacks in experience, he makes up for in enthusiasm.  
  
When he reaches for her arm, pulling her against his chest, she goes willingly. Her lips curl upwards into the tiniest hint of a smile, because this is exactly where she wanted him — brown eyes impossibly darker with want, his hands running all over her body, the pretense of not wanting this as much as she does all but dropped.  
  
There’s no way she’s doing this in his room, in that sad single bed of his, when they’re home alone. Currently, they’re in the living room, lingering near the couch as they stand facing each other and the couch looks sort of inviting. She pushes him down onto it forcefully, then unclasps her bra and lets it fall to the floor. Next, she steps out of her panties, and looks up at him, baiting him. He lets out a groan as he takes her in, and she likes that too — how he looks like he’s never seen anyone as gorgeous as her every single time she gets undressed for him.  
  
“You know, my mom could come home unexpectedly,” he murmurs, but he’s already pulling his briefs off. If they were actually in any danger of being walked in on, she’s sure he’d have made her leave already.  
  
“Stop talking,” she demands, grinning when he reaches out his hand and waits for her to take it. She plays with his hand for a second, takes a step back, teasing. “You’re a lot cuter when you don’t talk.”  
  
He’s about to say something else, but then she leans forward and lets him pull her down on top of him.  
  
The way he cries out when she finally sits down in his lap and guides herself onto him makes her want to claim him, makes her forget that this is definitely only supposed to be about sex and keeping Polo’s secret. Sometimes she thinks she might actually like him, or something, and it’s… not ideal.  
  
When he furrows his brow as he tries to focus his eyes on hers it’s almost cute, like he’s concentrating so hard, he’s breaking a sweat. She takes his hand and brings it down to her waist. He holds it there, then mirrors the movement with his other hand. It’s not the rough way she’d like him to grab her, so she moves her hips tantalizingly slow and bites down on his earlobe, says, “Tighter,” and groans when he obliges. (He really is the best student there ever was.)  
  
He opens his mouth to speak, and she clamps a hand over it. If he has the mental capacity to form coherent sentences right now, she’s clearly not doing enough, so she picks up the pace of her hips and delights in the way he curses her name all quiet and frustrated.  
  
He's as close as she is, and she knows it. It's why she clenches around him on purpose and bites at his bottom lip when he groans. She likes driving him crazy like this.  
  
The soft way he looks at her when she sort of collapses onto him after makes her wonder what the hell she’s doing here, with him.  
  
“Sleep over,” he says, and she sort of scoffs jokingly, pushes at his chest.  
  
“What, in your tiny bed?”  
  
He nods, doesn’t even seem offended.  
  
“All the space we need.”  
  
He really can be very charming when he wants to be, Carla thinks. The effortless way in which he pulls off even the most ridiculous, cheesy lines still manage to make her want him more.  
  
But no, Carla knows better than to let herself linger. Playtime is over; her guard goes back up, and she gets up to gather her things.  
  
Samuel doesn’t seem surprised by this, just leans back and watches her, a calculating look on his face.  
  
It’s enough to make her want to stay.


	3. Carla/Guzmán - “You don’t love him.” “Oh, and you do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoever sent me this prompt, I LOVE YOU. I love this so, so much. I probably could've turned this into a super long one-shot, but the drabble format is perfect for this sort of story.

Through years of going to school with him, of having to spend family vacations with his, birthdays and parties and school assemblies, Carla knows Guzmán is rough around the edges. He doesn’t talk about feelings, and when he does, he’s too impulsive for his own good and doesn’t know when to shut up. Sometimes he gets too serious, like he’s sixteen going on thirty. Most of all, though, he has a bizarre sense of loyalty, which tends to manifest in strange ways. 

When he comes up to her at a party at his house, his smile tight-lipped, and pulls her away into a secluded hallway to talk, she doesn’t know what to expect. Or maybe she does, and she just really hopes they’re both smarter than this. 

“What is going on?” She straightens her shoulders and tries to give off stoic vibes. 

Guzmán sort of glances at her, takes a moment to let his eyes rake over her body, and she’s not sure how she feels about it. He’s never been shy about the fact that he thinks she’s attractive, and Carla has always sort of wished he’d at least have the decency to hide it better. 

“Stop being ridiculous,” he grits out, and she scoffs. The audacity. 

“I beg your pardon?”  
  
They’ve been here before, in this very same hallway of his house, having a version of the same conversation. 

“You don’t love him,” he says, simple and plain. 

Carla doesn’t want to be mean, but has to hide a grin when the perfect comeback falls from her lips. “Oh, and you do?” 

She’s talking about Lu, of course, who Guzmán has been taking for granted for several months now; never quite clear about his true intentions, making sure to keep the hope Lu so desperately clings to alive. 

“How is that the same? I’m not dating her.” 

Carla still doesn’t know what the hell he was thinking when he started this conversation. She hopes, for his sake, that he’s at least a little drunk. (She certainly is.) 

“She’s my best friend,” she says, then angrily grabs the bottle of beer he’s clutching from his hands and takes a sip. It tastes bitter, and she likes it — it seems fitting.

“And he’s mine,” Guzmán replies, calmly taking the bottle back from her. 

“Well, I’m glad we clarified that,” she mutters under her breath, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “I guess we’ve reached an impasse.” 

They’re just standing there, staring at each other. Their eyes lock and she refuses to look away first, and so does he. They’re both too stubborn for their own good, which is probably how they ended up here, actually. Finally, she lets out a breath, impatient, and rolls her eyes. 

“Okay, then,” she says, and takes a step towards the door, trying to leave, when he grabs her arm and stops her. 

“Guzmán,” she tries for a warning tone, but his hand has already moved up to her neck, pulling her closer. 

This isn’t the first time this has happened. A few weeks back, at school after a late tutoring session, they’d wound up in the library together, and she’d pushed him up against the classics section, giggling quietly when a copy of Lolita came off the shelf. 

Before that, at his house after working on a group project with Lu and Ander, he’d made up an excuse to get her to stay behind, had pushed her into the pool and grinned when she was forced to take off her wet school uniform. 

And even further back, years prior, they’d both agreed that there really was no logical reason for them not to end up together.They’d even made a naive, foolish pact. She’s sure she’ll never hold him to it. 

His face now impossibly close to hers, she makes one final attempt at letting this go.

“He’s your best friend, remember?” 

Guzmán chuckles, like he can’t believe she’d dare say it. Like he knows her last-ditch attempt at resisting is futile. 

“And isn’t she yours?” 

He is such an asshole. Leading Lu on for months, doing this behind her back, trying to make Carla feel guilty about the Polo aspect of it all. If she wanted to be cruel, she’d throw all that right back in his face. 

But his face really is a pretty good one, his lips very inviting, and his boyish charm mean. 

The way his lips taste like forbidden secrets isn’t lost on her. She bites down on one and hopes it keeps them safe. 

They don’t have long, they never do, and Carla wonders if this is what it will always be like — if she’ll be married to Polo someday, and might still sneak off to kiss his best friend at dinner parties. It’s a sad thought. 

Guzmán pulls away first, smoothes out her dress for her at her hip, where it’s become wrinkly from him his touch, then brushes a hand through her hair, too. It could almost pass for gentle, which is so unlike him these days, Carla thinks she must be imagining it. 

“Are we terrible people?” She asks, because the thought won’t leave her mind, and the masochist in her wants to hear him say it, wants him to agree with her. 

Instead, Guzmán laughs. It’s dry and stubborn. “No,” he says, matter of fact. “That’s why we keep them around.” 

Oddly enough, his logic seems sound. She loves Polo, even when she does this; she’d hate to hurt him by telling him about it. On a similar level, she supposes, Guzmán might care about Lu enough to keep this from her. 

“You don’t love him,” he repeats, his voice somber. “Not like that.” 

Her eyes fill with tears she’ll never shed. “Neither do you.” 

She’s not sure she’s talking about Lu anymore. Maybe she means Polo, because he really can’t care for his best friend very much if he’s willing to risk it all for her.   
  
His hand feels heavy on her elbow, and she brushes it off, looks away from him.

He leaves without saying another word. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These drabbles are so fun to write! Leave prompts for me [on tumblr](http://cupcakesarebetter.tumblr.com/) or in the comments below.


	4. Rebeka/Valerio - “Should you be drinking that much?”

It’s not Valerio’s place to comment. He shouldn’t even be taking note, really, but he still watches as Rebeka does several shots in a row without even flinching. (Tequila reposado, he thinks, which is an odd choice to say the least. He’s not a tequila purist by any means, but that's definitely _gross_.) 

They’re at some kind of nonsense school fundraiser, the kind with an open bar, and she’s clearly taking advantage. She’s in a more subdued red dress than he’s ever seen her in, definitely plain by her standards, and she’s got her hair down, which is a rare sight to see. She looks good, don’t get him wrong, but he likes the tomboy-esque dressed up version of her slightly better. His own extravagant fashion choices feel more justified when she’s around, like their styles play off of each other. 

He walks over to her on a whim, because he really is worried about her — the drinking is uncharacteristic, the outfit an odd choice, and the way she’s seemingly hellbent on not speaking to anyone else at this party a dead giveaway. Something’s going on and Valerio is going to fix it. 

Well, he’s gonna make her laugh first, but then he’s going to fix it. 

His plan backfires spectacularly. 

“Should you be drinking that much?” He’s leaning against the bar, one hand touching her arm and she full-on glares at him. Okay, not the reaction he expected, but he can work with that. 

The look she gives him is menacing, sort of irritable. “Shouldn’t you be minding your own fucking business?” 

Anyone else would probably back off, or apologize, but Valerio just laughs, unfazed. He knows she’s not mad at _him_ , so he’s not gonna be deterred. 

“Well, can I join you in drinking this inferior tequila at least?” 

Rebeka looks up from the bar, a hint of a smile on her face, as she pushes the bottle towards him. His fingers graze hers when he takes it from her, and she recoils from his touch. 

Well, okay, that’s new. He doesn’t ask her about it, doesn’t bother trying to use words to get to the bottom of whatever the hell has her this upset.  
  
Instead, he steals the shot glass she was drinking from and pours. He throws the liquor back quickly, not dwelling on the poignant taste, then refills the glass. This gets a chuckle out of Rebeka, and he smiles as he looks up at her.  
  
“I need to keep up with you, don’t I?”  
  
The way she nods slyly and pulls the glass back towards herself makes him think he’s helping, somehow, and he instantly feels better. Misery loves company, and all. He really doesn’t like when people in his orbit are sad.  
  
“Why’d you even come to this thing?” He asks after several minutes of comfortable silence and drinking.  
  
Rebeka scoffs. “Because I’m a masochist,” she mutters, and he follows her gaze to the other side of the room, where Samuel is standing, longingly gazing at a certain blonde bombshell who is, in turn, paying him absolutely zero attention. Valerio thinks Samu is kind of an idiot, but he doesn’t think this is the right time to bring that up.  
  
It takes him a minute, but Valerio puts two and two together. “You two…” He drifts off.  
  
At this, Rebeka nods solemnly, takes another shot and angles her legs towards him on the barstool she’s sitting on. 

She runs her finger over the rim of the shot glass they’re sharing, then pulls a face and laughs. “Should’ve known he’s too much of a pussy to handle my crazy,” she says, and Valerio can tell it’s not the true reason for the breakup. He raises a brow at her and nods, anyway.  
  
“Mere mortals can’t handle us,” he suggests, because as far as he’s concerned, they’re kind of the same. Complete opposites in some regards, but alike in all the important ways. Her sense of humor is sick and direct, which is kind of a prerequisite he looks for in friends.  
  
He’s got her where he wanted her, then, because she briefly grabs his hand where it’s resting on the bar and smirks at him.  
  
Rebeka and he are the sort of friends who love to flirt. He loves the palpable sexual tension between the two of them. It may have something to do with the fact that it's unresolved. The way they first met — when he’d hit on her at the first party of the year, then made out with her on the dance floor, or the way she’d tried to accost him just after winter break, when she was feeling needy and he was more than willing to let himself be distracted from the shit his dad was pulling, come to mind. Quite possibly, it may be related to the fact that he has a thing for women who hide behind larger than life, aggressive personalities.  
  
Either way, he figures it won’t hurt to engage in some innocent flirting to take her mind off of her breakup.  
  
And look, Valerio knows how to turn on the charm; he’s pretty sure his blatant yet targeted confidence alone could get him invited into as many beds as he’d like.  
  
“You’re supposed to be doing these shots with cinnamon and orange slices, you know?”  
  
There’s a little cinnamon shaker on the bar in between them, and a tiny plate of orange slices, which she hasn’t touched.  
  
He holds out his wrist to her, mostly to see what she’ll do. When she grabs it and licks a path down the top, he grins at her. He wasn’t sure that line would work, but evidently it did. Shaking some cinnamon onto his hand, he holds it out to her and she laps it up, then does another shot, finally biting into an orange slice.  
  
“Whoa there,” he teases, nudging her shoulder with his. “Licking me in front of your ex? A very specific fetish, but I’m game.”  
  
A familiar glint returns to her eyes, and she leans in close, sort of bites at his ear. “I thought you liked being watched,” she whispers, and even though he knows she’s just teasing him, he instantly feels himself move a little closer to her.  
  
They make eye contact when she pulls away, each daring the other to take this further without ever speaking a word. They’re still in public, surrounded by people they know, but that might be part of the fun of it, too.  
  
He takes the bait. “How do you know about that?”  
  
“Lucky guess,” Rebeka smirks, her eyes unrelenting. "Am I wrong?"  
  
He doesn't answer her, just meets her eyes and leers at her a little. 

She seems tipsy, but not as drunk as she should be, considering the mostly empty tequila bottle that’s currently sitting on the bar in front of them.  
  
In the end, he doesn’t have to ask. She just glances at him, then around the room they’re in and cocks her head towards the door. “My place?” She suggests, and he nods. “Perks of having the house to myself while my mother’s in prison.”  
  
He grins at that, even though he can tell she’s genuinely upset about all of this. He can’t relate, has never had a parental figure in his life that he wasn’t glad to be rid of, but figures it must be pretty tough for her.  
  
Normally, he’d worry about being seen leaving with her, but Polo and Cayetana aren’t here, and Lu is probably glaring at him already anyway — if Rebeka is cool with this, so is he.  
  
As they walk out, he puts an arm around her for good measure, catches Samuel’s eye and winks. Rebeka leans into him and laughs, sort of elbows him softly.  
  
“Let him stare,” Valerio murmurs, then kisses her cheek. “His fucking loss.” 


	5. Carla/Samuel - "Which part of me wasn't enough?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anon, I know you said this gave you s3 vibes, but I had this s2 idea and ran with it. Might revisit this and do a s3 version at some point. Hope you still like it!

It’s absolutely wrong for Carla to be here, for her to seek him out. Samuel played her and Carla doesn’t take that sort of thing lightly. Treason of the highest order deserves a suitable punishment — namely, her never speaking to him again. (She doesn’t know who she’s punishing here, herself or him.) 

Despite all of those things, despite all of the very legitimate reasons why she shouldn’t do this, she’s in front of his door a few days after Christmas, struggling to gather up the courage to knock. _God_. She needs to get a fucking grip. 

No part of her wants to push him into having a conversation about this. Yet her stupid fucking brain, the very thing that got her into this much trouble in the first place, is screaming at her to just raise her fist and knock already. 

She doesn’t have all night, either. Her father is under the impression that she’s at Lu’s dropping off Christmas presents. They haven’t spoken a word to each other in several days, and even then it was meaningless small talk, but she’ll always be Carla’s go-to excuse to hide things from her father. They’ll always have that in common, she thinks bitterly, because she knows Lu likes to use the same lie. 

Sighing, she forms her hand into a fist and knocks, the thudding of the door loud and clear. 

Samuel opens the door in a plain white shirt, black sweatpants low on his hips. He looks confused and sort of sleepy, like he just woke up from a nap. 

He wordlessly gestures for her to come in, and even while her legs take several steps forward, she’s still sort of fighting the urge to run back out the door. It slams shut, clearly his doing, which is the only indication she’s gotten as to how he feels about having her here so far. 

“Do you want anything to drink? Are you hungry?” 

Carla tries and fails not to smile at that. He’s such a good host. If he ever showed up at her house like this, she probably wouldn’t even open the door for him, much less offer him a drink. 

“A drink would be nice,” she says, and follows him to the small kitchenette, where he hands her a bottle of beer. The mere idea of drinking beer from a bottle would’ve seemed ridiculous to her months ago, but he’d broken down that wall, too. She pulls open one of the kitchen drawers and finds a bottle opener, first opens her own, then reaches out and uncaps his. 

It’s difficult not to just drop the bottles entirely when her fingers briefly brush his in the process. 

“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” he’s trying hard to get her to make eye contact, which she’s, in turn, trying hard to avoid. She doesn’t need the added pressure his pleading puppy dog eyes provide. 

She tries for a small joke instead. “I haven’t talked to you yet.” 

“Well, you did now,” he runs a hand through his hair, smiles a little, and she’s back to not knowing what the hell she came here to say in the first place. 

“Can we sit down?” She doesn’t wait for him to nod or agree, just walks over to the rundown sofa and folds her legs under herself. He follows right behind her, his knee brushing hers when he falls back into a sitting position, and she finds herself staring at the spot where they’re touching. 

Samuel takes a swig of beer to fill the silence, and she mirrors him. 

He breaks first. (Of course.) “Why are you here, Carla?”

It sounds so thespian coming from him. He has a flair for the dramatic, she’s noticed, and she’s still kind of annoyed with herself for not hating it more than she does. 

Carla decides to be dramatic, too. “Which part of me wasn’t enough?” 

She stares at the bottle of beer in her hand and suddenly feels very small. If it wasn’t the completely wrong time for it, she’d probably curl up in a ball and rock herself to sleep. 

It seems her words have awoken something in him, because his reply is more heated, almost defensive. “This was never about you,” he says, and she wants to slap him. “But of course you’d make it about yourself, that does sound like you.” Oh, she _really_ wants to slap him now. He can be so self-righteous and judgmental. 

She’s predictable, maybe, but he always did trigger the impulsive side of her. Her voice is loud and exasperated when she looks up to meet his eyes. “You mean leading me on and using me for some stupid plot to settle a score over Marina wasn’t about me? Don’t be ridiculous.”

The frustrated sigh he lets out is infuriating. Sometimes he just makes her _so_ angry.

“You make it sound like I forgot your birthday, or something,” he’s getting irritated, now, too. “Marina was killed, Carla. Someone I cared about died, and I wanted to get to the bottom of things.”

Carla scoffs. “It’s not like she cared about you very much, anyway,” the beer in her hands is warming up, and she plays with the label on it. 

She doesn’t expect for Samuel to reach for her hand, which is the only reason why she doesn’t brush it off straight away. “That’s never stopped me before,” he mutters, and she rolls her eyes at him. All of this would be much easier if she didn’t care about him, and wanted to get with his brother instead. The absurdity of that thought makes her chuckle and he stares at her, waiting to hear what comes next. 

Their eyes meet, and she wonders how bad of an idea it would be to lean in and let herself kiss him. (A terrible one; horrible; absolutely not worth the trouble.) 

This is the part where she should get up and leave. She’s gotten a tiny bit of closure, which is what she came here for, even if it’s not enough. It might never be enough. She’ll probably still replay these last few months back in her head years from now and wonder why she let herself care so much. 

Samuel is braver than she is, maybe, because he leans forward and kisses her. It’s just a small peck, like he’s testing out how she feels about it, and she lets the hand that isn’t holding her drink move to his hair, pulling him closer. 

When she feels herself giving up control, she pulls away and gets up, standing a safe distance away from him. (Safe enough to trust herself not to kiss him, anyway.) 

“Don’t talk to me at school,” she says, and means for it to sting. Instead, he sort of laughs at her. Carla glares. 

“Does that mean I can talk to you outside of school?” 

Pursing her lips, she considers this. The obvious answer is no, but they’re joking around, so she shrugs her shoulders at him, then sets the bottle of beer down on the table and walks out. 

She gets a string of texts from him later that night, and tries hard not to find them endearing. 

**21:37:** _You were more than enough for me_

**21:40:** _Too much, maybe_

Carla deletes them and turns off her phone. 


	6. Lu/Guzmán - "You’re so much smarter than this.”

She runs into Guzmán one day at a bookstore of all places, and lets her eyes linger because he’s in a gorgeous grey suit, still very tall and broad, and looks so successful and grown-up that she basically swoons. She’s 29, so he must be 30, and she hasn’t seen him in ten years.  
  
He’s the one who suggests a drink, but she’s the fool who fails to point out it’s barely noon and agrees to go. They’re in a small bar in no time, and he orders for her without asking, and she might find herself reaching for his hand when he sets the gin martini down in front of her, just because it feels good that he remembered her order. They talk about their lives a little, how he’s some hotshot lawyer now, with a fancy corner office overlooking the city and she tells him she just moved back to Madrid from New York, that she works in event marketing, and the way he nods and toasts her makes her blush.  
  
The whole time, she’s a little too aware of the casual affection he throws her way; when his hand lingers on her shoulder as he launches into a story about a trip he took recently, or how he just sort of grabs her hand as it sits on the bar between them, tracing the small tattoo on her wrist with his thumb.  
  
He doesn’t ask if she’s single, and neither does she. It feels redundant, because she doesn’t think she’d turn him down if he wasn’t, anyway. That’s how jaded she’s become. They leave after one drink, and he pulls her into a cab and gives the driver an address downtown without checking with her. It takes all of her combined restraint not to kiss him right then and there, and he can tell she’s growing fidgety and restless because he leans over in the back seat, whispers, “Always so impatient,” and she feels sixteen again, except this time it’s him pursuing _her_. It’s kind of a power trip.  
  
The apartment he takes her to is small but sleek, the perfect bachelor pad, and he laughs when she points that out. She doesn’t know why. He offers her a glass of water, and she gives him an incredulous look, walks over to him, and grabs him by the lapel of his shirt.  
  
“That’s not what I came here for,” she whispers, and they both seem to decide they’ve done enough talking.  
  
He fucks her with more finesse than he did ten years ago, but still with the same aggressive rigor; biting, scratching, grabbing at her. It’s just as good as she remembered, maybe even a little better, but that might be the nostalgia talking. When he moans her name as he drives into her, it makes her flashback to the many times he used to yell it at her, exasperated, and for some reason it makes this feel better, not worse.  
  
She gets dressed as he lies back in bed, an arm behind his head and watches her. Then, she walks over to him, grabs his phone (his passcode is still Marina’s birthday, of course) and saves her number for him. As she puts it down on the nightstand again, she spots the ring, a small but simple gold band and looks up to meet his eyes. He looks unapologetic and she scoffs.  
  
“Married?”  
  
He shakes his head no. “Engaged.”  
  
If Lu was a better person, she would angrily storm off and leave. But she isn’t, and she doesn’t even know this woman he’s with, so she can’t feel all that bad for her. “Happily?”  
  
It makes no difference to her, but she wants to know.  
  
His laugh is still boyish and bright, the sound of it completely out of place in the midst of this tense conversation. He sits up and reaches for her arm. “What do you think, Lu?”  
  
She thinks this is a stupid fucking idea, mostly. She also thinks she’s emotionally removed enough from his life to not form any sort of attachment, and that she wouldn’t mind having sex with him again. She thinks a lot of things, but says none of them.  
  
“Goodbye, Guzmán,” she mutters, grabs her bag and leaves.  
  
The moment she realizes she is truly and genuinely living in a tragic Hollywood movie is when he texts her later that day, sends her the most predictable line in the book. 

( _When can I see you again?_ )  
  
Without really meaning to, she starts incorporating their clandestine meetings into her busy schedule — a longer lunch break here, takeout dinners in his living room there, and she stops feeling all that bad about it. Guzmán casually tells her ‘they’ (even just hearing the pronoun makes her angry) don’t live in Madrid, so he rents the small city apartment for longer work days, when he can’t be bothered to drive all the way home to this woman.   
  
There really is no delicate way for her to put this, or make herself sound like she isn’t becoming the sort of woman she always resented in toxic romantic comedies. She’s the fucking villain in this story, and she knows it.  
  
She’s sleeping with an engaged man, and not just any engaged man. If anything, the fact that he’s her high school ex-boyfriend makes this worse, like she’s somehow gone above and beyond every telenovela cliché and fucked up her life even further.  
  
Lu isn’t cynical, not anymore, but sometimes the way he glances at her when they get dressed and he slips his ring back on makes her want to be.  
  
The truth is she didn’t know he had someone when this started, and that’s on him. Unfortunately, the more uncomfortable truth here is that Lu didn’t put a stop to any of this when she found out. That’s decidedly on her.  
  
She knows nothing about the woman he’s with, not even her name, and she’d like to keep it that way. Lu has been cheated on ( _by Guzmán_ , which she thinks is hella fucking ironic considering the situation they’re in) before and isn’t sure she’d be morally okay with doing this if she stopped thinking of his fiancé as this abstract concept of the other woman.  
  
He’s at her place one Saturday evening, and she’s walking him out, wearing just a shirt and panties, when she hears a key turn in the door. The only other person who has a key to her apartment is Carla, because she sometimes sleeps over when she can’t be bothered to take a car back out into the fancy suburb she lives in, so Lu instantly knows who’s about to catch them redhanded. If she hadn’t been so distracted for the past few hours, she probably would’ve checked her phone and known about Carla’s intent to stop by.  
  
The look on Carla’s face is priceless, honestly. The blonde walks into the living room and says hi to both of them, and Guzmán just sort of stands there with his mouth agape for a second. Lu isn’t deterred by Carla’s presence, just motions for him to leave. “I’ll see you later,” he says, and Lu bites her lip and nods.  
  
When she closes the door behind him and turns around, Carla’s face is unreadable.  
  
“Lu,” she says, and Lu already knows she doesn’t want to hear this. Anyone else, she could bullshit, but Carla knows her too well. “You’re so much smarter than this.”  
  
“Maybe I’m not,” she replies bitterly, even though she knows that's not true.  
  
Lu knows better than to keep seeing him, but she does it anyway. When the engagement ring is switched out for a wedding band a few months later, she still doesn’t block his number.  
  
He must be pretty miserable if he started cheating on this woman before he ever married her. If not, he’s just a bad person.  
  
Maybe they both are. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> send me prompts on [tumblr](http://cupcakesarebetter.tumblr.com/) (or just leave a comment below)


	7. Carla/Samuel - “Hasn’t this addiction done enough damage already?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Combining the prompts “Hasn’t this addiction done enough damage already?” and “Is being high all the time worth losing everything?” because Samuel is totally dramatic enough to use both of those lines in the span of one conversation.

Look, Carla’s having a shitty week. A shitty month, maybe, but she’s trying not to be dramatic. So what if recreational drug use is getting her through it? It’s not like she’s shooting heroin or anything. _That_ would be bad; this is fine. She has her standards.  
  
None of that is helped when Samuel finds her doing a tiny bit of molly at the club and decides to confront her. She’s not high, not yet, and she’s absolutely not in the mood for a lecture. He clearly is, but she’s pretty sure that’s just his default modus operandi — lecturing people about literally everything. He grabs her arm and drags her outside, his fingers bruising on her arm and she sort of laughs at him when he just stands across from her and stares scoldingly, like a father who isn’t mad, just disappointed. He doesn’t seem to find that very funny.  
  
“Hasn’t this addiction done enough damage already?”  
  
God, she doesn’t think she could glare any harder. Leave it to Samuel to be this fucking dramatic about something as trivial as her new casual drug habit. She snickers, then brushes his arm away.  
  
“This isn’t an addiction, you moron,” she says, irritated. “My life isn’t an after school special on drug abuse. I can enjoy getting high every now and then and still retain control of my life.”  
  
“I think you should stop,” he says, like that’s supposed to make her care, like his opinion matters to her in the slightest. Even if it does, maybe, she doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing.  
  
She scoffs. “And I think you don’t get a say in this.”  
  
He doesn’t budge, still looking at her in that concerned, exasperated way of his she wants to hate but can’t. It’s like all the synapses in her brain fire at once, a telltale sign of the drugs slowly kicking in, and she feels a little reckless all of a sudden.  
  
She can tell he’s surprised when she kisses him, sort of desperate and unpolished.  
  
His eyes are dark and his grin is hot when he glances back at her, kisses her hard, tongue pressing into her mouth. But it seems his temporary lapse in judgment is just that — temporary — because then he’s pulling away, trying to catch his breath.  
  
“This is a bad idea,” he says quietly, and Carla lets out a small laugh, still holding onto his sides, his skin warm under her hands.  
  
“Or a good one,” she counters. Samuel looks...confused? Surprised? Intrigued? One of those. She rubs her thumbs against his hipbones and he blinks slowly down at her. “It’s not like we were bad together.”  
  
She sees his resolve falter a little at that, like she’s saying exactly what he wants to hear, and she grins. They’re out back in the outdoor smoking area, alone, and she’s not sure he’d stop her if she tried to take this further. But she doesn’t, for now. As great as it feels, he’s kind of right — this is definitely a bad idea.  
  
Instead of leaning back in, he pulls away, holding her at arm’s length. She admires his restraint, she does, but she really would prefer they do less talking.  
  
She rolls her eyes. Of course, he isn’t done with his little lecture on drug abuse yet. “Is being high all the time worth losing everything?”  
  
Carla audibly groans at that, because telling a high person being high isn’t worth the trouble is like telling someone currently eating chocolate cake that chocolate is bad for you — it’s pointless. And really, she’s looking forward to having a fun time tonight, no room for these long, drawn out conversations. She’s not gonna be made to feel guilty for wanting to enjoy herself, every now and then. That doesn’t make her a bad person, or a drug addict.  
  
“Not like I’ve still got anything that isn’t worth losing,” she alludes. He crosses his arms in front of his chest, defensive.  
  
And really, in the grand scheme of things, she doesn’t. If she’s a little too careless, Yeray might not go along with her father’s plans for the winery, but that’s it, and he’s so obsessed with the idea of her that Carla’s pretty sure she could fuck another guy right in front of him and he’d somehow still want to be with her.  
  
Samuel scoffs, draws his eyebrows together and she instinctively knows — she just _knows_ — what he’s about to say.  
  
He says, “You could have me,” at the same time she says “I don’t want you.”  
  
The thing is, she’s also feeling the endorphin rush from the molly, and Samuel’s way too close to her, so she tries but fails to resist leaning against him, just a bit.  
  
He holds her there, puts a hand on her shoulder. “Come home with me,” he says, sincere. And she wants to, she does, but she’s not high enough to be _that_ stupid.  
  
She shakes her head and grins at him, because any other facial expression feels like a struggle right now. “I can’t.”  
  
Her vision is playing tricks on her, seemingly focusing and unfocusing at random, and she’s struck by how shiny and soft his hair looks. She runs a hand through it, and he grabs her wrist, which she promptly tries to pull out of his grasp.  
  
“You can’t or you won’t?” His eyes find hers, and she doesn’t want to pull away, but does it anyway.  
  
She puts some distance between them, enough for her to not accidentally get caught up in him again, and tries to focus on the beat of the bass she can hear coming from inside the club. Dancing sounds like a great idea right now.  
  
“Both,” she says, and leaves him standing there, a tortured expression on his face.  
  
His confusion is not at the top of her list of priorities right now. That list consists exclusively of getting some water, then popping some gum, and dancing the night away, in that exact order.  
  
And if Samuel happens to keep an eye on her all night, that cute worry line creasing his forehead, then that’s okay, too. 


	8. Rebeka/Valerio - "Can you really blame me?"

She's so fucking bad with temptation, and it always, always comes back to bite her in the ass.  
  
It’s not that she’s impulsive, or even reckless, but get some alcohol in her and present her with an opportunity to fuck up, and she’ll take it. She could give you a whole list of examples that show her track record isn’t exactly great.  
  
At least she’s got an excuse this time.  
  
Honestly, if Rebeka wasn’t so fed up with the curveballs life keeps throwing her, she’d probably hate herself a little bit more for what happens next.  
  
It’s like god, or satan, or whoever’s watching over her is bored. She’s sure if this was a game of Sims, they’d drown her in the pool for sport.  
  
Today is, without a doubt, the worst day of her life. Okay, no, maybe not the worst — she’s pretty sure you don’t get to say that when you’ve got a dead dad. So far, the runner up to the worst day of her life has resulted in her essentially being orphaned (well, her mother’s in prison, not dead, but _still_ ), almost kicked out of school, and then forced to start a joint venture to sell large amounts of drugs to her prep school classmates with Valerio, of all people, who she’s pretty sure doesn’t have a commercial bone in his body.  
  
They’re at Lu’s Valentine’s Day party, because as luck would fucking have it, the one year Rebe actually _isn’t_ single for VDay, it falls on the same day her house was raided and her mother arrested.  
  
Valerio looks sort of pissed, too, and she doesn’t know if that’s because Lu is throwing this party and they’re seemingly on bad terms, or because he feels weird about being back in this house he no longer lives in. But they’re not the kind of friends who actually, like, talk about the shit that’s bothering them, so she gets him a drink and makes him dance with her instead.  
  
Samuel makes a vague excuse to leave just a few hours into the night, which she thinks is suspicious and also really, really shitty of him. He hasn’t told her he feels bad about her mom being arrested at all, and to see him take off to pursue Carla or whatever the fuck else he might be doing hurts. She’s kind of on the verge of breaking down here — his support would be appreciated.  
  
If she wasn’t hellbent on not making a fool of herself at this stupid party, she thinks she might cry.  
  
Thankfully misery loves company, and she’s got Valerio right by her side to enable her. They do shots, a lot of shots, and she finds herself sort of playing with the zipper on his ridiculous lacy couture blouse as they’re sitting outside, watching the rest of the drunken crowd mingle.  
  
“You never drink this much,” he observes, and she kind of wonders if that’s him checking in on her, trying to make sure she’s okay after the day she’s had. All she does is take the tequila bottle from him and laugh.  
  
“Can you really blame me?”  
  
He shakes his head slowly, takes a sip of tequila and plays with her giant cross earrings, then runs a hand down to her neck carefully. They’re in public and they’re drunk and she definitely doesn’t care.  
  
Then, when they’ve had enough of laughing at the outfits people came up with for the night’s theme, he sort of gives her a pointed look, takes the bottle of tequila they’ve been sharing, then her hand, and starts walking upstairs.  


It takes her a second to understand that this is definitely a stupid idea, but then they’re in what she assumes is (used to be?) his bedroom, and she’s leaning back against the closed door because it’s good to have an escape route nearby should she decide to come to her senses.  
  
He’s too close to her, so close it wouldn’t take much for her to lean in, kiss him, and maybe push him onto the bed. (Theoretically speaking, because she’s not gonna do that. Obviously.) 

"We shouldn't," she says, because even she knows that's the truth, and she’s kind of the queen of stupid decisions. Just saying it means he knows she’s thinking about it, and he grins.  


Then Valerio’s hand slips between them and he slowly unbuttons Rebeka’s pants while their eyes are locked. "So?"  
  
The only reason she doesn’t push him away is the tequila in her system and the fact that she’s miserable enough to think she might deserve this. What’s the harm in fucking up her life a tiny bit further? She deserves a treat.  
  
She’s kissed Valerio before, multiple times in fact, and it’s almost too easy to give in when she knows he’ll make it worth her while. And yeah, she definitely has a boyfriend, except he’s not actually around much and when he is, he barely takes notice of her, so she doesn’t know if she should feel all that bad about this. (She still does.)  
  
His hand is sort of lingering on her hip, and when he moves it, she thinks he’s going to touch her, but instead he reaches over and locks the door. Smart. Maybe she should give him more credit.  
  
Then his hand is in her hair, pulling it out of the tidy bun it’s in, sort of smoothing it out over her shoulders. She knows she must look like an absolute mess, but the look on his face tells her he’s into that.  
  
If she takes the bait and reaches up to shrug off her stupid blazer, it’s only because she wants to see what he’ll do next. Call it morbid curiosity. His hands instantly move up her sides, pulling down the zipper of her top, which she promptly takes off. She thinks it’s kind of hot that he’s barely even touched her, and yet she’s halfway undressed already.  
  
Pushing against his toned chest, she moves them towards his bed, laughing when he falls back against it dramatically. “You’re definitely the only guy I know who could pull off that shirt,” she says. It’s honestly kind of amazing, a lacy see through material that shows off his abs just right. “But maybe you should… take it off.”  
  
He hums in agreement, and sort of beckons her to come closer. She steps out of her pants and shoes first, because getting up to take them off later will be annoying. Convenience is key. He seems to agree, because he’s unbuttoning his own pants, then discards them, and sits up to pull his shirt off as well.  
  
God, he looks good. It’s really unfair for one person to be this attractive.  
  
Of course, she tries to piss him off when she sits down in his lap and looks around the room, instead of at him. “Nice place you’ve got,” he pulls on her hair until she’s close enough to kiss, just bites at her lips briefly before he lets her go again. “Is this where you used to take all your hookups?”  
  
She means for it to be a joke, a shitty attempt at flirting, but he just sort of sternly shakes his head. “Lu would’ve killed me,” he says, and she laughs, because of course he’d bring up his fucking sister right now. That’s just so him.  
  
They’ve talked enough, she thinks, so she pins his hands above his head. He goes willingly, sort of grins at her, and then they’re kissing and she mostly stops thinking.  
  
Except then he’s on top of her, and she can’t even remember when she lost her underwear, and all of this is too much, too good, too fast.

"What about Samuel?" It’s shitty of her, maybe, but she tries to push him away with that and secretly hopes he won’t take the out she’s offering. This way they’re both culpable.  
  
He just hitches her leg up and shakes his head, kisses across her chest.  


"Not now."  


Maybe they'll talk later. She forgets to care.  


He kisses her, then pushes her into the mattress and fucks her like he's trying to prove some kind of point. Neither of them knows what that point is.


	9. Carla/Guzman - "You shouldn't have done that."

They're only home for a week and it's probably stupid to get all caught up with him again, but Carla cannot find it in her to care.  
  
She’s halfway through her second year of school in London, and Guzmán has just recently started university in Barcelona. She knows this because she saw it on his Instagram, not because they’ve talked much since the random month she spent in Madrid last summer, with him, when all of their other friends mysteriously disappeared or didn’t come home or didn’t want to see them.  
  
Now she’s mostly naked, in his pool, and she’s wondering if this was the smartest thing to do during spring break. Maybe her time would be better spent actually writing those term papers she’s got to turn in next week.  
  
"Do you think this is a bad idea?" she asks.  


"Nah," he says dismissively. “My parents aren’t home."

She laughs a little bit and feels his hands on her thighs, pulling her legs around him. "I mean _this_ ,” she moves her hips against him to drive her point home. “This is stupid.”  
  
“Guess you don’t need me to tell you that, then,” he leans in and kisses her, and that’s kind of the end of that conversation. Or it would be, if she wasn’t still somewhat of a smartass.  
  
“So it _is_ a bad idea,” she concludes, then kisses him again. She can live with that.  
  
Guzmán grins, and that shit-eating grin is probably the single most attractive thing about him. He gets so cocky and she loves it. ”Not a bad idea," he insists. "What else are we gonna do all break?"  
  
He looks sincere, and she thinks that somehow makes this an even _worse_ idea.  
  
“You’re totally right, Guzmán, secretly spending most of my spring break fucking my best friend’s ex-boyfriend is definitely the best use of my time.”  
  
He lets out this annoyed sigh, and she grins. Getting him riled up is part of the fun of this for her.  
  
Later, she’s upstairs at his house, walking around in the bathrobe he let her borrow. She walks out of the bathroom and across the hall to his room just in time for his mother to turn on the lights and give her a weird look.  
  
She can tell she’s trying not to look too shocked to see her, but Carla knows Guzmán is going to have to answer a ton of awkward questions when she leaves later. If Carla didn’t know any better, she’d think his mother looks happy to see her.  
  
“Carla? I didn’t know you were coming by,” Laura says, and then comes over and wraps her up in a hug, which would be weird enough if she wasn’t wearing her son’s oversized bathrobe and nothing else underneath.  
  
Thankfully Carla has had a lifetime's worth of practice when it comes to saving face, hugs her back and tells her it’s so nice to see her, too. “We went for a little bit of an impromptu swim, as you can see,” she motions to her robe and hopes that’s explanation enough for her getup.  
  
The week passes quickly, and she manages to avoid everyone except for Guzmán, Valerio and her parents, both of whom she is still barely on speaking terms with. Living under the same roof as them is a blast, to say the least. Carla kind of can’t wait to get back to London.  
  
Still, when Guzmán drops her off at home on her final night in the city, she knows it's the last time she'll see him until — well, who knows when. Whenever. It’s not that she wants this to be a permanent thing, but she learned last summer that being around him is actually fun now, that it reminds her of lazy childhood days spent chasing him around forests and beaches and gardens at dinner parties. The familiarity that comes with his tall, brooding presence is kind of a nice breath of fresh air.  
  
He kisses her and uses his hand to get her off right there in the driveway of her house and neither of them seems to care that her parents are right inside.  


"You shouldn't have done that," she says, breath coming out in pants and forehead a little sweaty. He’s grinning again. That grin is gonna get her in trouble someday.  


"How come?" he asks against her lips.  


She sighs and leans her forehead against his. "Because now I want so much more," she admits.  
  
His response is unexpected. “What time is your flight tomorrow?”  
  
“11:00. Why?”  
  
“Mine’s at 12:00. We could get a hotel at the airport…”  
  
Being spontaneous is not her strong suit. But the way he just casually suggests it, like it really is just that simple, makes her want to try. She pecks him on the lips and leaves him in his mother’s car, tells him to give her five minutes to grab her things.  
  
She doesn’t say goodbye to her parents, but she does let Mirella know she’s leaving. She’s sure the message will be passed on.  
  
They drive back to his house, where he collects his things, hugs his parents goodbye and calls them a cab to the airport.  
  
He’s just kind of looking at her weirdly on the drive there.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing,” he says, and she nudges his shoulder with her own because she doesn’t buy it. “My mom thinks you’re my girlfriend.”  
  
Well. That’s not what she expected to hear. They don’t really talk about what this is, so she laughs it off.  
  
“Your mom has wanted me to marry into the family for as long as I can remember,” she mutters, and he laughs and nods. “I think when she saw me walking around your house wearing your robe, she felt like she’d won the lottery.”  
  
That’s that topic settled. Neither of them bothers to elaborate further; it’s too weird to acknowledge that their parents always sort of assumed they’d get married someday.  
  
“You know, you’re a pretty shitty girlfriend,” he says later that night, when they’re eating room service in bed in their suite at the Crowne Plaza. “You never even text me when we’re apart.”  
  
She steals a fry from his plate and chuckles when he tries to take it back from her.  
  
“I could text you,” she says, serious for a moment, amidst all the joking around. “Maybe.”  
  
He texts her a few days after they get back to their respective university campuses.  
  
_What are you wearing?_  
  
Oh, this sort of texting she can absolutely do.  
  
_Very little._  
  
She’s already gotten up to find a better angle for the picture she’s trying to take when she sees his reply.  
  
_A better girlfriend would send me a picture of that..._  
  
Carla bites her lip to try and stop herself from smiling. Smiles ruin nudes, and her quality standards are high.  
  
When she’s happy with the result, she attaches it to a text and hits send.  
  
_Never question my ability to be the best girlfriend ever again._  
  
He calls her seconds later, and she’s already grinning when she picks up.  
  
“Best girlfriend ever is right,” he says, and she wonders what this means for them.  
  
She hopes she gets to find out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forever obsessed with the idea of these two.


	10. Rebeka/Valerio - "I know you're willing to cheat on her."

He fucks Rebeka at the club when she comes up to him and asks him to because he’s feeling generous and he’s not gonna turn down a hot girl offering herself up like that. He also doesn’t mind the distraction from the whole getting kicked out of the house and trying to somehow get over Lu thing, so it’s really a no brainer.  
  
If he’d known what she’s like in bed, he probably would’ve done this sooner. Like, maybe the day he met her, or something.  
  
This continues for a few weeks, and he almost lets himself get invested — they start spending time together outside of hooking up, they have a few sober (!) conversations about shit he usually doesn’t talk about and, well, he thinks that bodes well for his chances to maybe not fuck this up completely.  
  
Except then she fucks it up instead. Go fucking figure.  
  
Samu finally bothers to open his eyes and see what’s been right in front of him all along. The fool realizes a girl as gorgeous and smart and hilarious (shut up, he likes her, he gets to say this shit) as Rebeka is into him and snatches her up. Not that he seems particularly invested; most of his time at school is spent sort of longingly gazing at Carla, which just makes Valerio madder. Samu’s an asshole, Rebeka is apparently dumber than he thought, and he’s on his own again.  
  
If he was still into drugs, he’d probably consider this a great time to finally try out crystal meth and descend into madness and inevitable death, but he’s too sober these days to still think that sounds like a fun way to go. And he kind of values keeping all of his teeth, so there’s that, too.  
  
It’s when he gets drunk, alone, one night at the apartment, trying distinctly to ignore the way he can hear Rebeka and Samu laughing in the living room, that he decides he needs to find someone to take this energy out on. He might try to pick a fight otherwise, and while he knows he could take Samu on easily, he’s pretty sure if Rebe’s around to witness it, she’d knock him out in one solid punch. Her boxing get up is straight out of fetish porn, he’s pretty sure.  
  
So he picks up Cayetana at Lu’s Valentine’s bash, tries to fuck Rebeka out of his system and pretends like he doesn’t actually detest blondes when he pulls on her hair. She’s a total fucking submissive, which is surprising considering the kind of attitude she likes to show off at school, and he’s instantly bored. He likes his women to fight back — sex is a two-way street, a fight to the death. Kind of lame when your prey just accepts defeat.  
  
Gentlemen prefer blondes — Valerio definitely doesn’t.  
  
His plan to ignore Rebeka for the rest of his life (read: until she ends things with Samu) is shot to hell when she shows up to Lu’s stupid fucking Easter party dressed in this hot little black dress and gold shoes with her hair tumbling down her back and her eyes all smokey.  
  
It’s like he sees her and any restraint he was showing previously, any feeble attempt at moving on by getting involved with Cayetana is shot to hell. Her boyfriend A.K.A. his roommate is nowhere to be found, and Cayetana had a family thing tonight, so that bodes well for his ability to hold back.  
  
He lasts two drinks, which he honestly think is admirable, until he goes over to her and wraps a hand around her torso, pulling her flush against his chest. There are people around, and he doesn’t give a shit. He doesn’t owe anyone at this party a fucking thing. They’re in a corner of the room and there’s a lot of drunk commotion, and the people they know here are probably too self-involved to watch their exchange anyway.  
  
She glares back at him before he even says anything, which kind of makes him smile. Feisty little minx.  
  
"I wanna fuck you so bad right now."  


She tenses and tries to elbow him in the side, groans all annoyed when he holds her in place and doesn't move. He’s definitely not gonna move.  


“I have a boyfriend," she whispers heatedly over the music. "And you have a girlfriend, or whatever."  


He just went from turned on to pissed off in, like, one-third of a second.  


“Yeah, only because you have a fucking boyfriend," he says harshly in her ear.   
  
No, he isn’t ashamed to admit he’d be with her in a heartbeat if she showed any signs of wanting him.  
  
“You know, this is low, even for you,” she glances over at him, then pushes back against him, which is really just fucking cruel at this point. It also contradicts what she just said, so he allows himself to smirk a little.   
  
He scoffs in her ear, then licks the shell of it just because he can. “You don’t know me at all, Rebe.”  
  
"I know you're willing to cheat on her."  
  
And yeah, he might be. So what. It’s not like he’s married to the girl; he was bored and pissed at Rebeka for getting together with someone who clearly barely even gives her the time of day, and he needed a distraction. Cayetana was heartbroken over Polo leaving for boarding school and probably assumed he’d make good arm candy. It’s not very Shakespearean. Of course he’s willing to give all that up if Rebeka is game.  
  
He grins and pushes himself closer to her to make sure she can feel how much this whole thing is turning him on. "You haven't said no."  


He feels her take a deep breath. "You haven't asked."  
  
He doesn’t ask. It’s not his style. He tells her, instead, makes it sound all threatening and commandeering and hopes she’ll at least pretend to fight him on it. He’d love some semblance of a cat and mouse game, after weeks of having to deal with Cayetana’s lackluster interest in the art of hate sex.  
  
“You really think you can just tell me to fuck you and make me go along with that?”  
  
Her voice is steady, sort of angry, too, and he’d almost believe her if he couldn’t tell her heart is beating faster than it was just a second ago, thumping aggressively where his hand is splayed over her ribcage.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, then moves so he’s standing in front of her. “I really do.”  
  
The scoff that falls from her lips is short-lived because then she's grabbing his hand, dragging him to the nearest deserted hallway.  
  
And yeah, the fact that they're both kind of knowingly cheating on their partners makes the sex even hotter. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sort of liked the idea of Valerio being a tad more bitter and aggressive deep down and went with it.


	11. Lu/Valerio - Jealous!Valerio

Lu is a fucking tease. Valerio’s always known this to be true but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating when she does stupid shit, just to fuck with him.  
  
(He may be a little drunk, excuse the vulgarity.)  
  
He remembers how she used to do this on family vacations, even, how she’d flirt with random men twice her age at pool bars, just to get him to come over and rescue her. That was fine. That was all playing pretend. This is not.  
  
This isn’t fine, because Guzmán is her boyfriend, and Valerio is powerless to stop it.  
  
They’re at a party, and it’s past midnight. The club is packed. Lu is drunk, her flushed cheeks giving it away, and she’s wearing this green dress he knows she likes to wear solely to test him, because he told her it was his favorite once, in a moment of weakness. Even when he’s pissed at her, she still looks cute. She _is_ cute.  
  
What’s less cute is the way Guzmán comes up behind her on the dance floor and starts grinding against her, his hands low on her hips, face in her hair. Lu is staring at Valerio across the room, an absolutely wicked look in her eye, and he can’t find it in himself to look away.

She dances back on him, a sinfully slow twist of her hips, and grips his hair, pulling him down so that his mouth finds its way down the column of her neck. Guzmán goes all too willingly, drunk, sloppy. His fingers move to the hem of her dress and dip under, palm trailing up the inside of her thigh.

When he latches on to a spot beneath her ear, Lu holds Valerio’s gaze and moans, too low to be heard over the thump of the bass, but he knows it, can see it in the way her lips curve. 

His carefully maintained composure finally cracks and he lets her see the dark look on his face. A tiny smirk forms on her lips.  


Victory flashes in Lu’s eyes and she throws her head back, moving in time with the music. And just like that, she stops looking over at him — she’s won, game over, time to bask in her win.  
  
Valerio clutches the drink in his hand a little tighter and tries not to let his anger show.  
  
If he was religious, he’d pray to whatever god or cult leader that may be to make her stop doing this to him. But religion is a sham, and even Tom Cruise and Scientology can’t save him from being completely at Lu’s mercy.  
  
It’s Rebeka who finally snaps him out of his frustrating exercise in glaring at Lu.  
  
“You look like you need another drink,” she says, then grabs his arm and walks towards the bar. “My treat.”  
  
He laughs and nods, but he really shouldn’t have another. He’s had enough to last him all week, more or less.  
  
The shot of tequila still feels good as it burns its way down his throat. And he likes Rebeka, really, but he can’t be bothered to lean against the bar with her and make small talk about random shit right now. It’s too loud in here to talk, and he suddenly feels the need to leave and get some fresh air.  
  
Lu happens to be standing right in his path to the door when he walks out, and he sort of hip checks her on purpose, just to piss her off. 

She doesn’t follow him, and he’s glad about that. They don’t need to keep doing this in public when they live wall to wall, anyway. Something about minimizing risk, or whatever.

Instead, it’s Rebeka who trails after him, then offers him a cigarette and gives him a knowing look when they come to stand outside the venue. She looks like she’s about to say something, so he takes the lit cigarette from her fingers and exhales aggressively when he takes the first drag. 

He really isn’t in the mood to talk, not even if it’s just them jointly indulging in feeling miserable and frustrated. He saw Samuel leave with Carla earlier, and he’s sure Rebeka did, too.

Now that he’s gotten away from the loud music, he can focus on the pleasant buzz he’s feeling. Drugs are great, but alcohol is fun, too. Rebeka is wearing her hair down today, which makes him want to reach out and play with it, so he does. She’s probably drunk because she takes the cigarette from him, takes a drag, and blows smoke right in his face in response. 

It’s probably not the best idea he’s ever had, not when he knows Lu is particularly competitive with Rebeka. Valerio has always thought that’s probably because the two of them are surprisingly similar. It’s not the best idea, but he does it anyway. “Wanna come home with me?” 

Rebeka snorts, and that’s fun, too, how she’s completely unlike Lu sometimes. Maybe his taste in women isn't as predictable after all. “What’s in it for me?” 

“Orgasms,” he supposes, and she laughs, puts the cigarette they were sharing out with her foot. “Multiple.” 

Then they’re kissing, sloppily, and it’s almost enough for him to stop thinking about what Lu might be doing on the dimly lit club dance floor right now. 

If she can throw her relationship in his face, he gets to retaliate. 

The irritated look on Lu’s face when he walks downstairs with Rebeka in the morning is definitely worth it. 

And really, the smug grin Rebeka shoots Lu makes him think she doesn’t exactly mind using him to piss off his sister, either.  


Win-win. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently even when I try to write Valerio x Lu now, my weird obsession with Rebeka/Valerio sneaks in. Might just cut out the middle man and go for Rebe x Lu next... (update: I did - chapter 17...)


	12. Marina/not!dying - “Do you remember?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know absolutely zero people like Marina (me included) but I sort of got stuck on this idea so here's a long-ish 2k drabble about what would've happened if Marina didn't die that night.

She almost died. That’s what the doctors say.  
  
Her skull was cracked open, there was blood pooling around her head, and if someone hadn’t immediately called for help, she would be six feet under right now. That’s what they tell her.  
  
Thinking hurts right now, but she tries anyway. She wonders who found her.  
  
Her heartbeat thuds loudly in her chest, amplified by a headache so severe, she’s not sure how she can even be processing what the nurse is saying. And she’s barely processing it, really. All she can focus on is the deep, steady rhythm of her heart, threatening to overexert itself because it’s so happy to still be beating.  
  
Then there’s the cloud of confusion surrounding the whole thing, the doubt about what actually happened that’s creeping in. Did Polo— was he— it doesn’t make sense.  
  
Her mother and father aren’t here, and miraculously Guzmán isn’t, either. It’s like her body made a conscious decision to wake up from the brief medically induced coma in the middle of the night, just to give her time to process things before her family bursts in to give her hell.  
  
Double vision makes focusing on the nurse next to her bed tough. Marina isn’t sure which of her heads is real, so eye contact is out of the question.  
  
“What about…” She trails off. It kind of hurts to speak, like her headache is amplified by it. It’s as though the sheer mechanics of moving her lips and sucking in enough air to make her vocal cords vibrate with sound is equivalent to running a marathon.  
  
Instead, she points towards her abdomen, hopes the nurse will understand. And it seems she does, because a sad look crosses her face.  
  
“You lost the baby,” she says, and Marina would probably consider crying, if her brain didn’t feel like it was on fire. If her body wasn’t still busy trying to replenish the blood she lost.  
  
She’s relieved about losing the baby; perhaps more relieved than she is about being alive.  
  
In a turn of events so chaotic, she can barely wrap her head around them, Marina is granted a second chance at life.  
  
No part of her wants to take it.  
  
**  
  
The memories of that night come back in hazy chunks, fragments of conversation, of a confrontation that she can’t be sure actually happened. That’s what she hates most about all of this, she decides.  
  
Not the pounding headaches, or the way she _feels_ rather than looks paler than usual. The worst part is how she herself has become an unreliable narrator who can’t quite keep the facts of her own existence straight anymore.  
  
The first time she remembers any of it, she’s sitting up in her hospital bed, Guzmán by her bedside. He’s telling her some random story about how their mother is redecorating the house to keep busy, how she might not recognize the living room when she gets to go home. Riveting.  
  
It feels a little like she’s in a movie. The flashback feels so real, she sort of feels her vision going blurry and thinks she’d lose her balance if she wasn’t already sitting in a hospital bed, attached to monitors and fluids. The school pool is dark, safe for the lights fixed to the pool tiles. She sees herself standing there, in the dress she’d reluctantly agreed to wear to the end of year party. Then she sees the look on her face, the rage. Her hand collides with Polo’s cheek. _Slap_. Him falling to the ground. “She’s using you, Polo,” she hears the film version of herself yell, and wow, does she always sound this intense? This is intense.  
  
“Marina?” Guzmán’s hand is on her arm, shaking her. “Are you okay?”

  
She doesn’t know the answer to that question. Instead, she runs a hand over her forehead, finds it hot and slightly moist with sweat.  
  
“Who found me?”  
  
Guzmán looks like he’s the one with the short term memory loss, not her. Like he can’t even comprehend that question.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“After the—“ She stops short of calling it an accident, because she can’t remember if it was one. Instead she gestures to her head injury, covered by several layers of bandages. “After it happened, who found me?”  
  
And god damn it if her mind isn’t playing tricks on her. It might be. But Guzmán says what he says, and she can’t stop the sinking feeling in her stomach when she hears it.  
  
“Polo.” 

  
**  
  
Nano doesn’t visit her. Probably because her parents won’t let him in.  
  
She’s not allowed to use her phone because her doctors claim having too many distractions will overwhelm her brain. If she wasn’t overwhelmed enough trying to have a basic conversation with her medical team, she might fight them on it harder.  
  
It’s surprising to discover that her father is the emotional parent. He’s the one who looks like he’s on the brink of tears every time he visits, like he feels helpless when she requests more morphine or asks him to leave because she’s too tired to speak to anyone.  
  
Her mother is stoic. Reserved. Practical.  
  
“You’ll have time to recover over the summer and then you’ll be able to go back to school with everyone else,” she says, flashing Marina what she thinks is meant to be an encouraging smile.  
  
Give her another week of rest and recovery, and she’ll be back to glaring and rolling her eyes. For now, the morphine keeps her sedated enough that all she can do is nod, her eyelids already growing heavy again.  
  
Sometimes bits and pieces of that night come back to her in dreams, too. But the memories are unreliable, no more than fever dreams that leave her waking up startled. She wakes up screaming one night, because her head wound feels like it’s on fire.  
  
The night nurse comes rushing in, turns on the lights and asks her if she’s alright.  
  
Marina is breathing heavy and there are tears streaming down her cheeks. She’s obviously not fucking _alright_ , but she nods anyway.  
  
Her head still throbs, and it must be because of the dream she just had. She swears she can still feel the impact of the heavy metal object, can hear the cracking sound her skull must’ve made. Then there’s the part where she feels herself drop to the tiled floor. Feeling helpless and shocked and scared, raising a hand up to the wound and realizing it comes away bloody.  
  
Reliving the physical pain isn’t the worst part of the dream, though; the worst part is seeing herself look back at Polo as her legs give out.  
  
**  
  
Nobody knows she remembers that part, and maybe that’s for the best. Maybe she’ll wait until she’s better, until she’s sure her memory isn’t completely off-base.  
  
Maybe she'll never tell anyone about this, ever.   
  
Maybe she'll accept this second chance at life and cut her losses.

**  
  
Summer passes in a blur; she doesn’t get discharged until early August, she still takes naps throughout the day, her short term memory still isn’t great.  
  
Guzmán has long stopped doting on her, the aftershocks of what she’s sure had him wondering if he’d be an only child going forward slowly fading.  
  
She’s resting in her room one afternoon when her mother knocks on her door and says something about a visitor. Marina has no idea who could be visiting her; she doesn’t have friends. But her mom sounds happy about this development, and Marina figures she’s put her through enough; she’ll make ten minutes of awkward small talk with whoever walks through the door and send them on their way.  
  
When Polo walks in, looking tan and well-rested and chipper, she considers faking a headache. She also considers screaming for help. Seeing as she's almost positive he almost killed her, the last time they were alone together, she’s pretty sure it would be justified.  
  
But she stays put, eyes him warily. Maybe if she doesn’t say anything, he’ll fill in the blanks in her memory and make all of this make sense somehow.  
  
He walks over to her and she briefly thinks that, in movies, this is where he’d grab a pillow to smother her with. Having this much time on her hands hasn’t been good for her; she’s been watching too much daytime television. Polo just sits down in the chair next to her bed and smiles at her.  
  
“Hi,” he says, finally, and it comes out nervous, like he’s testing out the word on his tongue. “How are you?”  
  
And forgive her for being jaded, but that’s the only question anyone has asked her for the past two months, when the answer is kind of really fucking obvious.  
  
“Alive,” she states, and she can tell he’s waiting for her to politely ask him the same. She isn’t going to.  
  
“D-do you,” he starts, stutter sneaking in. Everything about his demeanor is confirming that he must have been the one who did this to her, the one who smashed her fucking head open. It’s not that she’s angry, she’s just incredibly confused. “Do you remember?”  
  
She thinks that’s a loaded question. She remembers bits and pieces, fragments and scenes that may as well have happened to a stranger, not to her. But she knows what he’s really asking — _do you know I did this to you?_ — so she nods slowly.  
  
He sighs, deep, like he was expecting her to react this way.   
  
“It was an accident,” he’s looking anywhere but at her when he says it, like this is the most emotionally draining conversation he’s ever had to have.  
  
There’s no other way to put it — something in her snaps when she hears him say it. “An accident? You accidentally hit me hard enough to permanently dent my fucking skull?”  
  
Her voice is loud and angry and he looks put off by it. She feels caught off-guard by it herself; she hasn't heard her own voice like this in months. “Did you accidentally trip into me? Because I find that very hard to believe.”  
  
Polo just sighs again, like this entire conversation is a burden to him. It awakens a sort of rage she hasn’t felt in months in her. The rage feels like deja-vu, feels exactly like she now remembers she did that night at the stupid fucking party arguing next to the stupid fucking school pool.  
  
Next to her, Polo wets his lips. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”  
  
And really, that’s all he has to say for himself? He nearly killed her and all she gets is a generic sorry?  
  
“And I should have hit you harder the first time,” she says, very much implying that she wishes she’d had the foresight to blunder him in the head with that stupid trophy.  
  
He nods, holds up his palms like he’s conceding that point to her. Good. Yelling is exhausting, she doesn’t want to have to do more of it.  
  
Where do they go from here? She ponders this and can’t come to any workable conclusion.  
  
“Does Guzmán know?”  
  
He shakes his head. She’s not surprised. “I— I didn’t know how to tell him. Marina, you can’t tell him, please—“  
  
“You’re not really in a position to be asking me for anything right now, don’t you think?”  
  
The air in the room is still tense, and entirely too fucked up for her to wrap her injured head around, but she feels herself let go of some of the anger she’s been harboring, is glad she can at least stop second-guessing herself now that she knows it was Polo who did this.  
  
She realizes something else, then. “We’re the only people who know?”  
  
Polo shrugs, then nods a little.  
  
No police officer has come to talk to her. No one has asked her any questions about that night. Her father isn’t in prison, and neither is Carla’s. Someone must have pulled more than a few strings.  
  
Her family doesn’t care about finding out who tried to kill her — however accidental it might have been — because it prevented them from having their corrupt asses dragged by the press and the courts alike.  
  
It's so fucking typical. Her major head injury is collateral damage to them.  
  
Oddly enough, she doesn’t feel like outing him. Maybe suffering major trauma to the head has made her softer.  
  
“Okay,” she says, determined and resigned to it at once. Polo visibly relaxes at that, his shoulders slumping forward. She hopes knowing he’d have to talk to her about this eventually ruined his summer. She kind of wishes it would ruin the rest of his life.  
  
Maybe she’s still a little bitter about the fact that she almost died at his hands.  
  
At school a week later, everything is exactly the way it was last year — Carla is a bitch to her without ever saying a word, Lu is a straight-up bitch to her, her brother is still a stupid broody rich kid on an ego trip.  
  
Sometimes she’ll catch Polo staring at her in class, and that’s the only reminder that some things are different now. That she has a scar the size of a five euro bill on the back of her head, that she’s keeping Polo’s horrible secret for him, because she’s always believed in charity work.  
  
Things are different in all the wrong ways, and nothing feels right anymore at all. 


	13. Rebeka/Nano - "Leave my brother alone."

Crushes are horrible. Rebeka is actively _trying_ not to crush on Samuel, who’s busy lusting after Carla, and yet she just can’t fucking bring herself to stop. It’s a little like being stuck in a vicious cycle of people who are into people that don’t like them back. She wants Samu, Samu wants Carla, Carla wants… attention, maybe.   
  
It’s not like Rebe's ever really been forward with him. She’s never outright told him she likes him, but she’s attractive, and chill, and a total guys girl; she’s the textbook girlfriend someone like Samuel should want. Problem being that he doesn’t, not even a little bit.  
  
Her mother is a complete trainwreck, as usual. Throwing a Halloween party in her name and not even bothering to tell her before sending out invites to half of the school? Classic Sandra move. 

She’s upstairs attempting to change out of the stupid fucking princess dress because Samuel hasn’t even looked at her all night, clearly doesn’t see her that way. Instead, he uses her as a literal and figurative punching bag. She never should’ve taught him how to box. 

She’s unzipping her dress when the door opens and some guy in a Michael Myers mask stumbles in. She laughs and greets him as such. 

Then he takes the mask off and— well. Maybe Samuel didn’t actually hit the bone structure lottery as much as she always assumed he did because Nano’s chin is fucking perfect, like it was shaped from marble. 

“Leave my brother alone,” he says, and she laughs in his face. As if Samuel would ever like her enough to be with her in any capacity. 

“Believe me, he’s leaving _me_ alone,” she regards him carefully. She didn’t remember him being this tall. He’s taller than Samu, his jaw more defined, his eyes green instead of brown. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m the only girl in the world who’d go for the idiot brother over the wild child.” 

He seems intrigued by that statement, if nothing else.  
  
He’s bold. Bolder than Samuel, and god, she really needs to stop comparing them to each other. “That’s a shame.”  
  
The way he looks her up and down makes heat pool low in her stomach. He doesn’t bother trying to hide how he’s checking her out, and she decides there’s no real reason not to step closer to him and grab him by the leather jacket. She’s single, almost 18, and it’s not like she’ll be an unwilling participant in any of this. He can’t be older than 23, 24 maybe. That’s fine.  
  
Her zipper was already undone when he came in, so she lets the dress fall down and watches it gather around her feet. If the way his eyes follow the yellow satin is any indication, he’s interested. And that alone, his wanting eyes on her, feels so good, Rebeka is having trouble not just pouncing on him. The way his hands move to her hips, gripping them kind of mean and rough makes her skin tingle with anticipation.  
  
It’s nice to just be wanted for once. No questions asked, no complicated feelings involved.  
  
And no, this isn’t the most sensible thing she could’ve done tonight. This probably doesn’t even make the list of top 50 most sensible things she’s done in the past week.  
  
"Do you make a habit of picking up the chicks your brother likes?"

Nano grins, bites his lip as he looks away from her. ”I wasn't aware he liked you.”  
  
That should probably sting more than it does, but all she does is laugh, impressed. Maybe she likes when people take her down a notch. Maybe she’s forgotten that, once upon a time, she used to come home to see him sat around her living room table in their dingy, shitty apartment downtown, used to see him watch her mother count hundred euro bills like they grow on trees.  
  
He throws his leather jacket across the room and takes off his shirt.  
  
When he just looks at her, like he’s waiting for her reaction, she grins, mean. “Yeah?” He nods, eyes staring back at her own. “I don’t think he likes you very much either.”  
  
She’s standing way too close to this virtual stranger, wearing entirely too little clothing, and when he reaches for his belt, she lets out a cynical laugh. Before she can change her mind, she’s moved impossibly closer to him, unzips his pants and pushes them down off his hips.  
  
He brushes a finger up her neck and lifts her chin, so she lets out a little groan, and it seems that's all the invitation he needed, because he leans in and — there really is no better way to say it — claims her mouth as his. It’s so passionate, so fierce, so much better than she ever could have imagined. She should’ve known he’d kiss like this, that he’d be rough and raw and untamed.  
  
Rebeka lets herself enjoy it, lets herself be the careless, reckless abandon girl she usually tries hard to impersonate.  
  
And he’s good. It’s good. All-consuming; the sort of shit drugged up faux free spirits wrote poetry about in the 1900s.  
  
They’re good together.  
  
When she's basking in the afterglow, she’s on her back, sweaty all over, trying to catch her breath. He’s sort of just staring at her from his spot on the bed next to her, smirks a little. The curve of his smirk, combined with those cheekbones of his are a lethal combination; he could say virtually anything and she’d let him, just because of that.  
  
“So, how’s Sandra?”  
  
That gets a laugh out of her, breaks through the foggy, blissed-out haze.  
  
“Not interested in working with you again, convict.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why am I so intrigued by the idea that these two have some sort of history? Hmm.


	14. Lu/Polo - "Did you know she's cheating on you?"

She walks in on them. That’s probably the worst part about all of this — having to see it happen with her own eyes. 

Lu cracks open the door to Guzmán’s room and instantly freezes. Carla is in his lap, only wearing her school uniform skirt, and Guzmán is fully naked. Both of them are moaning, taking turns kissing each other in whatever places they can reach, and Lu swears she’s never seen Guzmán look at _her_ like this before. That stings more than anything. 

Of course, Carla gets everything handed to her in life; once again, she takes what Lu has been working tirelessly for without ever having to put in the effort. Of course, Carla looks like a fucking model turned porn star on top of him, her blonde hair fanning around her head like a halo, her cheeks perfectly flushed. 

(If she sounds bitter, you’ll have to cut her some slack — she’s pretty sure she’s allowed to be.) 

And sure, she could slam the door and make a scene, but how would that make this any better? It won’t make her forget what she just saw. She’d lose her best friend _and_ Guzmán. It’s a total non-option.

Instead, she quietly backs away, tiptoes downstairs and walks out of the gates before she calls herself a Cabify. 

Guzmán and her aren’t exactly exclusive. She knew, in theory, that he could be sleeping with other people. She certainly isn’t doing that; she’s hellbent on turning their fling into a full-blown relationship, but that doesn’t mean he can’t stray. Truthfully, she just didn’t think he was. Call her naive, maybe. Foolish. Too loyal.

Really, she just didn’t think he’d be enough of an asshole to sleep with her best friend, who is also his best friend’s girlfriend. He’s 17, his sex drive is high, but she sort of thought she was enough for him.  
  
She just wants to be enough for someone for once in her fucking life. Is that too much to ask?

But she’s all for equal opportunity blaming. Carla knows exactly how Lu feels about him. This is pretty fucking shitty of her, too.  
  
Lu isn’t the best at thinking clearly in situations as grave and fucked up as this; that’s what she tells herself, anyway, when she gives her Cabify driver Polo’s address.  
  
When she knocks on his door, his mother (one of them, anyway, Lu can’t really keep their names straight) opens it and smiles at her warmly.  
  
“Lucrecia,” she smiles, ushering her inside. “What a lovely surprise.”  
  
Lu smiles back at her, stern and short, and lets their maid take her coat off of her shoulders.  
  
Small talk with his mother isn’t what she came here for. “Is Polo around?” It sounds a little too forward, and she finds herself elaborating in a haste to avoid coming off as rude. “We have a group project due tomorrow and I just realized he took my notes home.”  
  
At this, his mother nods. “He’s upstairs, dear.”  
  
She walks upstairs with purpose, her stupid school uniform skirt swishing around her hips. All she can think of when she sees the fabric from the corner of her eye is Carla, wearing this very same skirt, while Guzmán is fucking her. How they were both grinning at each other, like this was all part of a well-practiced routine. Like they’ve done this a million times before. God, it’s etched into her brain.  
  
Once she gets to Polo’s room, she knocks, then doesn’t wait for him to ask her to come in. She doesn’t look up at him as she closes the door behind herself and flips the lock closed.  
  
When she does look at him, he’s sitting at his desk, pen in hand, like she caught him doing homework. He’s still wearing his uniform, the top button of his shirt undone, his suspenders crossed over his chest. Bless his soul, he looks like the poster boy for private schooling.  
  
The look he gives her is one of sheer confusion. “Lu?”  
  
Lu doesn’t have a game plan here, really. She has no idea how she’s gonna play this. She walks over to his unmade bed and sits down, slips her feet out of her flats.  
  
“Did you know Carla is fucking Guzmán?”  
  
The way he looks at her wide-eyed, then blinks really fast like he’s struggling to find the right words to say is surprising, to say the least. Finally, he nods. “I m-may have known about that f-for a while,” he says, looks away from her as if he can’t handle saying it to her face.  
  
Lu can’t help it. She starts laughing. She should’ve known he’d be the kind of lame, sad idiot to stay with the girl who is cheating on him with his best friend. Fucking pathetic.  
  
Not that she has any plans to leave Guzmán. But that’s different; they’re not dating. If they were, then— well. She would probably at least consider breaking up with him.  
  
So hey — she figures she’ll rub some salt in the wound to get a rise out of him. Carla told her once, when she got a little too drunk on champagne, that Polo has an angry side; that he can be intense and dominant and— well, Lu would like to see that for herself.  
  
She regards him with pity when she says, “Don’t you ever get tired of being her little lap dog?”  
  
He finally puts his pen down, as if it’s taken him this long to realize he won’t just be able to get rid of her and go back to doing his homework. Sweet little Polo.  
  
“I don’t know, Lu,” he says, and his angular cheekbones somehow look sharper than usual, his eyes zeroed in on her as he gets up. “Don’t you ever get tired of having Guzmán treat you like a blow-up doll?”  
  
She’s across the room in what feels like seconds, meets him halfway, and goes to slap him across the face. But he’s bigger and stronger than her, with quick reflexes, so he catches her wrist mid-air and pulls it down.  
  
“What was the point of this little visit, Lu? Huh?” Oh, he’s angry now. So angry, Lu can sort of see what Carla was talking about. “Did you come here to rub my failed relationship in my face and expect me to sit back and take it?”  
  
She didn’t. She came here for exactly this reason. To have someone to be angry with; someone who might understand. What she didn’t expect is for him to direct his anger at her — it’s a welcome distraction from the issue at hand.  
  
“You’re pathetic, Polo,” she whispers, tone scathing, and she means it. He’s weak, too accommodating, way too fucking preoccupied with the way he comes across.  
  
He actually grins at her then. It figures that he’d get off on being demeaned. Conveniently, she quite enjoys doing it.  
  
“And you’re just a whore,” he spits out the words, his contempt for her evident in them. Baseless provocation has always worked well on her; this is no different.  
  
She’s never once thought of Polo as someone she might be attracted to. It’s fucked up, maybe, that him calling her a whore makes her consider it.  
  
When she raises the hand he isn’t grabbing onto and slaps him, hard, he lets her. And yeah, he liked that — she can tell. His lips curl upward in the tiniest of smirks, and Lu can’t seem to decide where the hell they’re gonna go from here.  
  
They’re both breathing heavy, and it’s like he’s reading her mind, because the next thing she knows he’s got both of her wrists pinned behind her back, his chest right up against hers. They’re breathing the same air, and there’s something bizarrely intimate about that. His eyes are boring into hers.  
  
The cynic in her would probably say this is payback. Revenge. Them getting even.  
  
But she’s too angry to be cynical right now. Too angry, and maybe a little too turned on.  She lets him make the first move, because if this blows up in her face, she’ll be able to blame him for it. The kiss is rough, teeth clashing, tongues battling. The second he lets go of her wrists, she’s grabbing him by the suspenders, steers him towards his bed and only pulls away long enough to unbutton her blouse and take off her bra.  
  
Polo still looks angry as she watches him strip down, still looks like he would’ve probably preferred a fist fight to this, but there’s no time to dwell on that, not when he pulls her into his lap and bites at her neck roughly, like he wants it to hurt. He grabs her hair so hard she yelps, then runs his hands up her thighs, grins meanly when he notices she’s not wearing anything underneath her skirt.  
  
“See?” He breathes, his palms splayed on her ass. “Nothing but a whore.”  
  
It’s counterintuitive, maybe, that she kisses him instead of denying it.  
  
She keeps her skirt on and suppresses a groan at the idea of having Carla and Guzmán discover them like this.  
  
If she ignores Carla’s calls for the rest of the night, she figures that’s only fair. Let her worry.   
  
For once, Lu gets to take something away from Carla; something important enough to hurt.   
  
Getting even is exhilarating.  
  



	15. Rebeka/Valerio - one of them getting the other off drugs

She never really got what people mean when they say it gets worse before it gets better. She kind of does now.  
  
It happens like this: It’s a random Sunday in late July, and she’s sort of minding her own business, trying not to think about the fact that she’ll actually have to go back to school in two weeks, when she gets a call. From Valerio. She gets a call from Valerio, who has never once called her. It’s enough to freak her out a bit.  
  
“I fucked up,” is all he says, then he sort of laughs, sounds a little impulsive. She’s absolutely sure he’s high.  
  
She didn’t even know he was back on cocaine. That may explain why she hasn’t seen much of him all summer.  
  
“Where are you?”  
  
Turns out he’s renting a studio downtown now. He texts her the address, and she begrudgingly calls a cab and makes her way over there, even though it’s late and she’s already in her pajamas. She knows he’s not, like, on the verge of overdosing because he usually sticks to coke and that’s kind of hard to do, so she’s not in a rush, but she still keeps on the simple cotton shorts and t-shirt combo; she’s not gonna dress up for him. She doesn’t even know what the fuck he wants to see her for.  
  
He opens the door for her, shirtless, and she tries to tell herself that’s because it’s summer in Madrid, where 35 degrees is considered a cool day. It’s definitely not because he wants her to know he’s got a very defined six-pack. (She knew that already, anyway.)  
  
“Let me get this straight,” she says, her feet up in his lap as she sips from a cold bottle of beer. “You want me to be your coke accountability buddy? Your coke spirit guide?”  
  
It’s not that she doesn't like him. She likes him a lot. Too much, probably, for someone with a severe affinity for drugs and chaos and not ever being the kind of friend you can actually count on.  
  
She likes him enough to be here right now, even though her mother is gonna be super fucking annoying about her staying out all night, so.  
  
And of course she doesn’t want to see him go back to being a coked-up, ambivalent shithead. No, cocaine isn’t the kind of drug that’s gonna ruin his life in the short term, but long term this whole carefree persona is gonna get really old, so if he wants to get his shit together, she’ll try her best to play the enabler.  
  
He’s somewhat high, though she’s so used to that, he doesn’t even seem particularly chipper. “What the hell are you asking me to do?”  
  
His hands are sort of lightly massaging her bare feet, which feels a little too good, if she’s being honest.  
  
“Distract me,” he says, plain and simple. Zero suggestive undertone whatsoever; that’s all in her head. She’s the one immediately thinking of ways to distract him. “Get high with me today, and then make sure I don’t touch any of this shit again.”  
  
Rebeka snorts. “Why the fuck would I need to get high with you in order to keep you accountable? That sounds counter-intuitive.”  
  
But he’s grinning, and she kind of likes coke, anyway. Likes how it basically just feels like you had a very, very strong coffee; unlike other drugs. Rebeka likes to stay in control, so if she were the type to take anything regularly, coke would probably be one of her drugs of choice. 

But she isn’t and this is kind of a really, really stupid idea. It’s a very Valerio-esque idea to come up with. He’ll come up with something completely irrational but will sell it so well that people (her included) end up going along with it.  
  
She already knows how this night will end. This isn't the first time it's happened and it won't be the last.  
  
(With her, comfortably high, in his lap. Under him. All over him.)  
  
“I want to get rid of the rest of it,” he says it with conviction, like that somehow makes sense, and she hates herself for thinking that it does. Less temptation when there’s no way to indulge.  
  
So she does a line, then another, watches him do the last one and just quirks her brow at him. “What now, huh?”  
  
Valerio giggles, curls bopping on his head, falling in his eyes. He needs a haircut. She reaches out to play with a particularly unruly curl, twirls it around her finger.  
  
“Now we distract each other,” he says, smiling, and it might be the slight endorphin rush from the coke in her system that makes her lean over and kiss him. It’s not like they haven’t done this before.  
  
She’s sitting in his lap in no time, her shirt on the floor, his hand in her shorts, and she finds herself sort of laughing at the absurdity of it all. He grins against her neck; she can feel his teeth on her skin.  
  
“What’s so funny?”  
  
Hearing the words muffled against her neck just makes her laugh harder. She’ll definitely blame the cocaine for this one. “Didn’t they tell you not to sleep with your sponsor in narcotics anonymous?”  
  
That gets a chuckle out of him, and he pulls away, pecks her lips. “Pretty sure you can’t be my sponsor if you’re on drugs.”  
  
And yeah, okay, she sees why he got her high now. Something about her not getting to act like she’s morally superior. An exercise in empathy. And fun. Cocaine is still fun. She’d almost forgotten about that in the months since she’s last done any.  
  
“Spirit guide it is, then,” she says, and then he’s kissing her and she finally stops trying to converse with him at all.

Let her body do the talking. 

** 

For someone intent on getting sober, Valerio sure likes to party a lot. Rebe finds out through a simple google search that you probably shouldn’t be drinking or doing any other drugs while trying to get off one. He tells her he can’t stop drinking _and_ doing coke at once. That’s pretty fucked up, if you ask her. 

Maybe he’s more fucked up than she thought.  
  
Not that she’s thought about him much, before their impromptu hangout on Sunday.  
  
Anyway, now it’s Wednesday, and two in the morning, and they’re at a random club in a shitty part of town, doing shots.  
  
He’s absolutely shitfaced, and Rebeka is getting there herself.  
  
And no, this may not be the smartest thing to do as his appointed coke spirit guide; she should definitely try to keep him sober. But he’d been sort of fidgety and restless while sober, and tequila is something she felt he could probably handle. If he wanted a more responsible person keeping track of his sobriety, he should’ve gone to Samuel, or maybe an actual licensed psychologist.  
  
This isn’t his first sobriety rodeo, anyway. He’s gotten away from drugs successfully before; if he thinks drinking is a good idea, she’ll go along with it.  
  
So they’re out dancing, surrounded by a whole bunch of high people — she can tell by the way no one seems particularly grounded or in tune with the music — and she’s seriously wondering if this is the worst things will get for him. Really, this doesn’t even seem that bad.  
  
Sure, he seemed more jumpy than usual when they met up earlier, and maybe a bit more worn down, but that’s it.  
  
He pulls her close on the dance floor, kisses her neck a little and she lets herself lean into it.  
  
They go back to his place after but they don’t really do anything; they’re too drunk for that. He kisses her lazily, like he knows she'll still be here in the morning when they're both more sober, then pulls her close and she’s drunk enough to fall asleep all cuddled up with him.  
  
Again, if this is what it takes to keep him away from drugs, she’ll gladly be of service.  
  
Rebeka is so fucking selfless, sometimes. Like when she joins him in the shower in the morning, for no self-serving purpose whatsoever. She definitely doesn’t do it because she’s kind of really, really into him.  
  
That’s preposterous. 

**  
  
Things do get worse, then.  
  
Still not, like, _foaming-at-the-mouth-from-seizures-due-to-heroine-withdrawals-_ bad, but worse nonetheless.  
  
Her mother is gone for the weekend — on some sketchy work trip Rebeka didn’t want to hear about — so Valerio has taken up residence in her room, insisting he might need the moral support.  
  
And really, he must be doing worse than he’s letting on if he’s needy enough to show up on her doorstep with an overnight bag and an assortment of movie snacks.  
  
People tend to take her excellent advice-giving and listening skills for granted, but it feels different with Valerio. He’s thanked her, genuinely, multiple times this week. That means she doesn’t mind having him take over her house for the weekend. It’s not like she had plans, anyway.  
  
She doesn’t tell him that this is probably the worst place to stay if you want to get away from drugs seeing as her mother literally has a whole safe full of coke upstairs. Oh well.  
  
They spend the day in and around her pool, and it’s fine, basically. He seems tired, sort of erratic, but he’s always a little erratic; she’s not sure if this is actually related to his newfound sobriety.  
  
She somehow keeps him away from the liquor cabinet all night, too, makes him watch some terrible Netflix movie with her and they’re in bed at a reasonable hour, just sort of talking quietly.  
  
He’s tired and fidget-y and restless, too. Rebe doesn’t know how the fuck she got dragged into this whole sobriety ploy, but she might as well go with it now.  
  
“So how bad is it, really,” she asks, turning to face him, even though it’s dark and she can barely make out his eyes. “There’s no way you’re actually just okay.”  
  
She thinks she sees him grin, because the light of the moon is briefly reflected on his teeth. “Yeah,” he whispers. His voice is sort of calm and serious and very unlike him when he says, “I’m not.”  
  
He doesn’t elaborate, and she doesn’t ask him to.  
  
Instead, she leans over and hugs him. He could probably use the comforting.  
  
She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but she wakes up not long after, judging by the unchanged darkness of night outside. For a second, she’s disoriented, but then she realizes what woke her up — Valerio is sort of half talking, half moaning in his sleep. He must be having some sort of nightmare, so she puts a hand on his shoulder to calm him down.  
  
He opens his eyes immediately, looks over at her like he wasn’t even sleeping at all, and she sighs. Light, fitful sleep is the absolute worst. Poor him.  
  
They should tell kids about this during anti-drug education — nobody likes having their sleep interrupted.  
  
She runs her hand from his shoulder down to his elbow. “You okay?”  
  
“Can’t sleep,” he says shaking his head. “Again.”  
  
He’s on his back, so she scoots closer to him and puts her head on his chest.  
  
“I’ll bore you to sleep,” she says, then starts telling him the elaborate story of how her great grandfather moved from France to Valencia 85 years ago to start an orange orchard. The story is actually dreadfully boring, so she knows for sure it'll work. Valerio is sort of playing with her hair, which is the only reason she notices he’s fallen asleep however many minutes later, because his fingers have stopped moving through it.  
  
He wakes up a few more times that night, and she isn’t even mad at him when he nudges her awake each time, too. This must be a lot worse for him — she’s not gonna complain about losing out on a little bit of sleep.  
  
In the morning, he looks a lot more animated and alive than he did yesterday, and she’s glad. Or she would be glad, if she felt even remotely the same. Ugh, going back to sleep sounds pretty damn tempting right about now.  
  
But he’s sort of staring at her like he has other plans.  
  
“Happy one week of sobriety,” she murmurs when she feels awake enough to speak. He grins — the sort of chillingly raw grin only Valerio can pull off, and god, she’s missed that grin — then reaches over and squeezes her shoulder.  
  
So yeah, he’s gonna be fine. He’s resilient.  
  
Without warning, he grabs her hand and gets up, drags her up with him.  
  
“We’re getting brunch,” he declares, dead serious. If anyone else made her get up at 10 am on a Sunday after barely sleeping and suggested brunch, she’d punch them in the face. “To celebrate.”  
  
Groaning, she walks over to her closet to find clothes to wear.  
  
As she walks away she looks at him over her shoulder and grins, “There better be mimosas involved.”  
  
He laughs. “How else would we celebrate my sobriety in style?”  
  
And really, if he happens to lose his drug habit and gain a girlfriend all in the same week, that’s probably a worthy trade-off. Rebe would much rather get him hooked on her.


	16. Carla/Polo - catching up after years of not talking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvious canon divergence notice: Polo DIDN'T die in this because he SHOULND'T have died, period.

She walks into his office one day, unannounced. His assistant lets her in without any protest after she asks for Polo — Carla knows he goes by his full name now, or Leo, anything to sound older than he actually is — and she likes having the element of surprise on her side.  
  
Neither of them has spoken to each other in the eight years since their confrontation in court, since she _lied_ in court to protect her family. Maybe a part of her lied to protect him, too. He went to boarding school in England, then stayed there for university, and she doesn’t know a single person in her circle of high school friends who’s still in touch with him. The only reason she knows anything about what’s going on in his life at all is because her mother talks to his mothers, because all three of them still hold out hope that they might one day get to call each other family.  
  
She’s pretty sure that ship sailed when she inadvertently helped him cover up a murder, but if that’s what her mother needs to tell herself to get her through the day, so be it.  
  
Nepotism has worked wonders for both of them. Polo works for his mother’s publishing empire now, is the managing director of one of the men’s magazines the conglomerate produces. Carla is fully in charge of her mother’s wine business, has even been able to buy Yeray out, and since she’s finally back in Madrid now, she thinks it’s time they catch up.  
  
If nothing else, she just wants to be the kind of person who’s on good terms with her very serious — maybe too serious, if anything — high school ex-boyfriend.  
  
So she walks into his fancy office with the corporate, milky glass walls, her summery dress flowing around her waist, her hair braided down her back, two cups of coffee in hand and writes any nervousness she might feel off to sleep deprivation.  
  
It should probably not feel as good as it does when she sees the flicker of shock in his eyes as he looks at her from behind his desk, holds up a hand to signal he’s on a call and then proceeds to stammer his way through a quick goodbye to get off the phone.  
  
She puts the coffee down on his desk and decides it's probably best if she doesn't have any more caffeine.  
  
He’s staring. Okay, fine, she’ll admit that feels good; better than good, maybe.  
  
But then again, she’s staring too. He’s in a business casual outfit, his dress shirt sleeves rolled up, his arms tan and defined. His hair is a little longer than she remembers, sort of falls in his eyes a little and his eyes— well, they’re still the same shade of blue that makes her want to drown in them.  
  
When he puts down his phone, he finally snaps out of looking like he’s frozen in place and a boyish, shy grin spreads across his face. It takes her back. It reminds her of all the soft-spoken conversations they used to have about life, and love, and happiness — reminds her that he used to get nervous around her, before he realized she didn’t want to be impressed. She wanted to be seen, and loved, for who she is.  
  
Teenage love really is the purest form of affection.  
  
That’s the reason she grins back at him, the reason she doesn’t even try to act cool and casual about any of this. She’s excited to see him — she wouldn’t have sought him out otherwise.  
  
He gets up, and she meets him halfway, hugs him tighter than she planned on. It’s a spur of the moment thing. His cologne is still the same. Then, he pulls away a little, his face not much further than a few inches from hers and makes eye contact.  
  
“I’d say it’s nice to see you, but that would suggest I was expecting your visit,” he says, grinning and she nods a little.  
  
He sounds like he’s finally settled into the grown-up vocabulary he’s always preferred. It doesn’t sound put on anymore; he no longer sounds too mature for his age. That may just have something to do with the fact that he’s 26 years old, but she’s still finding it hard to believe they’re both adults.  
  
She’s smiling right back at him as she brushes a hand over his elbows where she’s still holding on to him. “I hope it’s a nice surprise, at least,” she muses, a coy look on her face. 

“Of course,” Polo nods again, jerks his head around nervously.  
  
It’s endearing. She’s glad she’s not the only one affected by this spur of the moment reunion, even more glad she seems to be hiding it better.  
  
“Do you have time for lunch?” 

He nods instantly, a charming smile on his lips. “I’ll make time,” he says, and seeing him act like a confident adult does something to her. 

He grabs his phone, then motions for her to walk out and stays behind for just a minute to let his assistant know he’s taking the afternoon off. 

Carla tries hard not to be excited about the possibility of spending an entire afternoon with him. She has no idea what’s wrong with her; all she wanted was to see how he’s doing, but now that doesn’t seem like enough anymore.  
  
The restaurant he takes her to is intimate and upscale, exactly the sort of place she’d expect him to frequent these days. It’s not in-your-face fancy, but the decor and demeanor of the wait staff is uppity enough to be a tasteful reminder that most of the general population probably can’t afford to spend 80 euros on a simple bottle of the house red.  
  
It’s two o’clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday, they probably both have more important things to do, and yet she knows the second they order a second bottle of wine that she’ll be avoiding her emails for the rest of the day.  
  
And he’s— fun. Less high strung, more confident, somehow less angsty and tortured. He’s still the same introvert trying not to be noticed, except somewhere along the way he must have shed a layer of that introversion because he doesn’t seem to struggle in telling her story after story, catching her up on things she doesn’t even have to prompt him on.  
  
Carla hangs on to his every word.  
  
After what feels like an eternity, he finally stops talking and takes a long gulp of his wine. “What about you?”  
  
And what about her? She’s not quite sure where to start.  
  
“Do you want the abridged version?”  
  
He laughs. “I want whichever version you want to be telling me.”  
  
There it is, so striking; the insinuation that he just wants her to be herself. He never used to be like this with her.  
  
Two hours into knowing adult Polo, she already knows she won’t be able to go back to _not_ knowing him again.  
  
So she tells him about all the things he missed — her parent’s divorce, the ensuing legal battle, her time in California for university. How she took over the wineries remotely, spent some time living in a tiny Spanish coastal town and just finally got back to Madrid a few weeks ago.  
  
Throughout the whole thing, he seems happy for her. He nods and laughs in all the right places, raises a toast to her when she talks about decimating her dad in front of the board of shareholders of the wineries.  
  
He does and says all the right things, and yet she can tell there’s something else on his mind.  
  
“How’s Guzmán?” His voice is quiet, suddenly shy, and instantly reminds her of the person he used to be, back when she had any idea about that.  
  
She could tell him all kinds of things about that. She might mention that he finished a business degree, that he left Madrid for good a few years ago. She could even tell him that they had a little bit of a fling for a while, but she knows he’s not asking about that. None of that is what he really wants to know or hear.  
  
Instead, she finishes her glass of wine and smiles at him when she sets it down.  
  
“He’s happy,” she says. Polo instantly looks relieved and she thinks that’s somehow just so fitting — how it took him several hours to work up the courage to find out this tiny piece of information which makes all the difference to him.  
  
They leave after two bottles of wine and minimal amounts of food, and the Madrid heat is stifling when they set foot outside the air-conditioned restaurant.  
  
“My building has a pool,” he says, casually, and Carla grins at him.  
  
They start walking and he flags down a taxi, holds the door open for her.  
  
“If I’d known about the pool I would’ve called you weeks ago.”  
  
He shakes his head laughing. “You probably would’ve just shown up at my house instead of stalking me at the office.”  
  
The drive to his place is short, too short if the way her mind is racing with the possibilities that await them is anything to go by.  
  
When he pushes her into the pool, still fully clothed, she feels 16 and 35 at once and she can’t decide if it’s because of the way she instantly flashes back to all the afternoons she spent at pools with him as a teenager or because this feels bigger than that, somehow. It feels tranquil and easy and settled.  
  
And the way he grins and jumps in after her feels even better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it took me this long to write about Carla/Polo considering that they are kind of my wistful "oh what could have been"-OTP. Sigh...


	17. Rebeka/Lu - being each other's rebound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw a Halloween episode gif set on tumblr earlier and sort of accidentally wrote this.

Lu flees the scene. She’s _that_ girl now.  
  
The girl who got dumped at a party. The girl who got dumped at a party because her boyfriend — _ex_ -boyfriend — was too much of a coward to just break up with her before he cheated. She’s sure he’d like to believe he was trying to end it before, that this is on her for not giving up on their relationship, but that’s fucking bullshit.  
  
Lu is loyal, but she isn’t delusional.  
  
She’s also entirely too sober to handle the reality of the situation.  
  
So she runs off, leaves him standing there looking at her like _she’s_ the one being irrational, like he didn’t just tell her he slept with another girl in the middle of a party attended by all of their closest friends.  
  
She does a few shots, dances with Omar a little, then rolls her eyes at Valerio as he transparently tries to hit on her using every vampire stereotype in the book.  
  
It’s nice of him to try to cheer her up, but she’s really not in the mood for making the same bad choices she always makes tonight. Not again. Maybe she can make other bad choices instead.  
  
It’s a spur of the moment thing, really. She still knows this house too well, even if someone else is living here now. She grabs a half-empty bottle of whiskey from the bar and makes her way upstairs to Guzmán’s — or what used to be his — room. Maybe she can hide up here for a while.  
  
Going home isn’t an option just yet. She’s miserable but hearing the crowds of people around her is making her feel less lonely, at least.  
  
When she opens the door to the bedroom, she doesn’t expect to see anyone in it. She definitely doesn’t expect to see Rebeka in a strapless bra and matching underwear, putting her costume on a hanger.  
  
The girl hasn’t seen her yet and Lu takes a moment to admire the view. She’d never admit this to anyone, least of all to Rebeka, but she kind of wishes she was as tall as her. The muscle definition on her thighs and the hint of abs bared to her from this angle are hard not to envy. She’d love to look like that, but that would require a level of dedication to working out and eating healthy that Lu doesn’t have the energy for; purging is a much easier diet to maintain. 

In hindsight, she probably could have guessed that this would be her bedroom. She probably should have known she’d pick this one. It’s got the nicest window front in the whole house.   
  
Anyway, before Lu can run away from what she’s sure will just be another petty catfight, Rebeka turns around and leers at her.  
  
“Didn’t take you for a perv, Barbie,” she snickers, and walks towards her, seemingly completely unbothered by her current state of undress. Lu would probably react the same way if she had been walked in on like this, but Rebeka’s confidence is clearly real, not fake, and that has Lu fascinated.  
  
Rebeka stops right in front of her, then reaches out and takes the bottle of whiskey from her hands. “You’re drinking whiskey? Is the party that bad?”  
  
She’s close enough for Lu to consider being honest with her. There’s something weirdly intimate about someone invading her personal space like this. But that would be foolish; Rebeka and her are reluctant frenemies — heart-to-hearts do not come with the territory.  
  
“You’re up here hiding too — you know how bad the party is,” she snickers, then harshly grabs the bottle from her hands and takes a swig. “Why are you prancing around naked, anyway?”  
  
Maybe acknowledging it will make her put on some clothes. Lu doesn’t like the distraction; it makes mean spirited comebacks harder to come up with.  
  
Rebeka seems to consider this, and if Lu didn’t know better, she’d think she looks vulnerable for just a second. Lu figures she might as well sit down on the bed for this part; her feet are killing her in these heels and Rebeka is clearly taking her time coming up with an answer.  
  
It’s an odd shift to their usual dynamic of quick-witted insults and sharp-tongued remarks. And then, in a move completely out of the ordinary for them, Rebeka just shrugs, looking a little defeated as she lets herself fall down onto her bed next to Lu.  
  
Lu doesn’t care about Rebeka’s wellbeing, but if she did, she’d probably ask her if everything is okay right about now. She likes their little mock-fights; this sucks.  
  
Rebeka wordlessly reaches a hand out towards Lu, and Lu takes another swig of the whiskey before handing over the bottle. The way she’s too lazy to sit up fully and sort of just clenches her abs as she tilts her head up is doing incredible things for her stomach.  
  
Lu doesn’t think twice about reaching out a hand and running a finger over the slight V of her hips. When Rebeka doesn’t flinch, Lu runs her hand up her side, marvels at how smooth the girl’s skin is. She feels her shift, and when she looks up, Rebeka is propping herself up on her elbows now, a smug look on her face.  
  
Lu is a sucker for smugness. It’s the number one thing that first made her notice Guzmán.  
  
She still pulls her hand away, because tonight probably isn’t the best night to make a decision as colossally stupid as this. Rebeka lets out a dry laugh. “Don’t stop on my account,” she taunts, and Lu can’t let her win this, obviously, so she reaches for the bottle of whiskey, takes a chug, and puts it down on the floor next to the bed.  
  
The realization that she’s actually _kissing_ Rebeka doesn’t quite set in until she feels her hands on the zipper of her elaborate lace dress, until she hastily shrugs it off, until she’s gotten rid of the skirt, too. Truthfully, the realization that this is actually, seriously happening is still setting in when she’s down to just her corset and underwear, grinding down against Rebeka’s thigh desperately.  


The last person she kissed – the last person she fucked – was Guzmán, and she wants to chase away his touch, his taste, replace it.  
  
Choosing someone like Rebeka to do it just makes sense. She couldn’t possibly find anyone more distracting than her.  
  
Her touch is bruising, raw, and she kisses just like she spews insults — she bites and pulls and elicits a sort of primal response from Lu, because Lu can’t afford to lose so she kisses her back harder, grips her hips even tighter, and figures they can compare bruises in the morning to determine the rightful winner.  
  
There’s a brief moment after, when they’re both completely out of breath because neither of them was willing to take anything slow, to give the other a chance to recover, just went from chasing one high to another, where Lu thinks maybe they’ll be friends after this.  
  
Rebeka is on her back next to her, covered in sweat, her hair an absolute mess, and somehow has the audacity to laugh. She laughs, sort of fitful, kind of maniacal and says, “I didn’t think you were a cheater,” like that is even remotely the right thing to be pointing out now, when Lu is still breathing heavy and trying to gather her bearings. (Trying to gather the strength to be threatening and rude when she tells Rebeka that this never happened, will never happen again, can never be referred to as having happened.)  
  
But Lu isn’t quite ready for that part yet, so she shrugs, runs a hand through the loose wisps of hair falling from her elaborate updo. “I’m not,” is all she says, and something like realization flicks across Rebeka’s face. She’s kind of annoyingly perceptive.  
  
“Well shit, I’m honored to be playing the role of your rebound, ice queen,” she snickers, as if this isn’t the most bizarre turn of events this night could have possibly taken. And maybe because she’s so perceptive, so tuned in to the way the mood shifts, she goes on, “At least you had a valid reason for doing this — I’m just a fucking idiot who can’t even get a guy as simple as Samuel to notice me.”  
  
Lu frowns. It’s a level of sincerity she didn’t expect from Rebeka, and maybe that’s the reason she turns onto her side to face her, twirling a piece of her hair around her finger.  
  
“Why would you _want_ him to notice you?” She pulls a face, genuinely baffled. She’s not even doing this to be nice; she just genuinely can’t imagine that a girl as gorgeous — and annoying and brash and tacky and a million other negative adjectives — as Rebeka would be willing to settle for someone like Samuel.  
  
It must have been the right thing to say, because Rebeka leans over and kisses her, still demanding and passionate and raw, but less mean.  
  
Making the same mistake again is probably okay.  
  
Lu forgets to care sometime between three and four in the morning, when the party downstairs grows quieter and the thumping of the bass finally subsides enough for her to focus on the steady beat of Rebeka’s heart where her head is resting on her chest.  
  
They can go back to ignoring and hating each other at school on Monday.


	18. Lu/Polo - running into each other at brunch after a hookup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Polo didn't die. Right? Right. We all know this is a murder free zone. 
> 
> Full prompt from tumblr: “i slept with you the other day and i didnt know we had a mutual friend and now we’re sitting across each other for brunch and it’s awkward because i ran out when you were asleep”

  
It’s not really something Lu does often — pick up guys, or let herself _be_ picked up by guys, at bars. But he’s charming and all prim and proper and looks like he’s about as privileged as she feels and she figures going back to his penthouse apartment in downtown Madrid really isn’t the worst thing she could do tonight. No, after her shitty breakup a few weeks ago, the worst thing she could’ve done tonight is give into her ex’ pleas and gone to see him.  
  
The sex is honestly really, really unexpectedly good. It’s not that she expected it to be bad, but the way he instantly sheds that layer of insistent politeness and instead becomes this super responsive, sexual person is hot as fuck. He lets her be dominant and bossy and acts like he actually _likes_ it, and really, that’s kind of all she could ever ask for.  
  
She leaves in the early morning hours and it feels kind of shitty because they honestly hit it off really well. Just sneaking out feels a little tacky and cheap, so she leaves him her number, because she wouldn’t mind a repeat of last night, as long as it’s not gonna lead to anything more serious. She’s in her final year of university, and kind of way too busy to start a new relationship, especially one that started with an above average drunk hookup. She also just got out of a toxic relationship, finally gathered up the courage to ditch her shitty, cheating ex-boyfriend and is feeling kind of jaded about the whole love thing.  
  
That’s her main motivation for sneaking out, that _and_ she promised Carla she’d drop by the little brunch she’s hosting. A few hours of sleep before then and a nice hot shower at her own place sound like a sensible plan.   


If you think about it, she leaves him passed out in his king sized bed for practical reasons. Slightly selfish, misguided, practical reasons. He’s smiling in his sleep when she puts the post it with her number on his bedside table, and she bites her lip and snaps a very blurry picture of him, just because. Think of it as a keepsake, maybe. Something to show to Carla later as proof that she actually did it — had hot, spontaneous sex with a virtual stranger without feeling hung up on Guzmán even once. 

She gets home, showers the smell of sex and drinking off of her, then sets an alarm for 9:30 am and turns in for another two hours of sleep.  
  
When she drags herself out of bed after snoozing her alarm twice, she feels kind of groggy still and is a little alarmed to find there’s a handprint on her hip and a distinct tooth shaped indent on the edge of her right breast; she must’ve been too caught up in the moment to remember how either of those marks got on her. They’re signs of a night well spent, though, and both in spots that are easy to hide.  
  
Carla would undoubtedly tease her about the marks, so it’s a good thing it’s winter and she’ll have no opportunity to show any skin. She puts on a cashmere sweater and these cute blue pants she recently bought at this lovely vintage shop, takes a few minutes to put her hair up in a nice, somewhat elaborate bun and puts on enough concealer to hide the mild under eye circles she’s dealing with.

She met Carla in her second year of university here in Madrid, and the two kind of hit it off so well, they’ve never really looked back. If Lu were the kind of person who believed in fate and soulmates and all that esoteric nonsense, she’d say Carla is that for her. Lu doesn’t have a sister, but that’s what she thinks of Carla as. Someone she has vicious fights with but will always be there for, no matter what. 

After moving into a new apartment recently, Carla decided against a traditional housewarming party and is instead throwing a housewarming brunch. Lu loves brunch even more than she does parties, so she’s pretty stoked. 

When she’s ready to go, it’s a little too early to leave but she figures she’ll just get going anyway. Worst case she’ll help Carla set up. She orders a Cabify, then sends Carla the picture of the man she ditched somewhat smoothly this morning and tells her she might be a little early.

Carla replies straight away, tells her she’ll need details, and that she’ll see her soon. Good. Lu kind of can’t wait to tell her all about this.

Belatedly, she realizes she doesn’t even know his name. That had seemed like a minor detail she didn’t need to bother with last night. She’s pretty sure he’d told her at one point, but it had been loud in the bar and she’d been tipsy and focused on his very, very blue eyes and— well, it seemed like the sort of thing that wasn’t going to matter much in the grand scheme of things.

Once she gets to Carla’s building, she gets buzzed in instantly, then walks into Carla’s beautiful, bright, painstakingly remodeled new apartment with a bottle of champagne and hugs the blonde tight.

“I don’t need a tour, since I’ve already been here, but feel free to give me one if you want to practice before the other guests arrive.”

Carla laughs, but shakes her head no. “Tell me about your slutventure from last night! Who is he? How was he? When are you seeing him again?”

Lu pours herself some orange juice, then adds champagne. “I don’t know his name, it was way hotter than it had any right to be, and I have no idea if I’ll ever see him again.”

Carla is pouring herself a drink as well, and flashes Lu a scandalized little grin. “You naughty little bitch! I’m so proud of you!”

It’s probably a little weird for her best friend to be hugging and celebrating her for having casual sex, but it’s been a work in progress for weeks. Carla had been convinced all Lu needed to get out of her breakup funk was “a pair of rough hands on her” and Lu had tried but failed to go through with one night stands multiple times. It does kind of feel like a minor success to have finally gotten it over with, to have broken down that barrier, especially considering the quality experience it turned out to be.

“It was... intense,” Lu smirks. “In a good way.”

She lifts up her sweater to show Carla the handprint on her hip, and Carla nods her approval.

“Oh, by the way,” Carla says while straightening out the table cloth. “I invited one of my high school friends. He’s chill, might give off major snob vibes at first glance though,” Lu sort of instantly gets what Carla means; every single one of Carla’s old friends she’s met so far has been mildly eccentric to say the least.

“Polo is my ex,” the blonde smiles. “You two would probably get along really well, actually. He acts all shy and put together but he’s pretty aggressive and fun to rile up.”

“Is he pretty?”

Carla rolls her eyes. “Are you doubting twelve-year-old me’s taste in men? Wow, Lu, you better leave if you’re gonna insult me like that.”

That’s a yes, then. “Is he single?”

“He just got back from doing a year abroad in New Zealand. I think he lived on a sheep farm, so the only female company he’s had in months is sheep...” 

Lu grins. “Finally I’ll get to prove once and for all that I’m better than sheep.”

The first people arrive, and Lu finds herself chatting animatedly with some of their classmates, even with the hot TA Carla is pretending to not be dating, and she feels herself growing a little tipsy with each mimosa she consumes.

As she’s making the rounds, she sees an attractive guy her age in a pretty blue and white dress shirt talking to Carla across the room. He’s got his back to her, but she can tell from his body language alone that he’s confident and put together. He looks like her type.

Carla waves her over, a glass of champagne in hand, and Lu puts on her most proper yet flirty smile. When she gets close enough to see the guy’s face, she literally almost drops the mimosa she’s been nursing. 

This can’t be happening.

He seems to recognize her too, judging by the amused smile playing on his lips. In no time she’s by their side, and Carla has put an arm around her.

“Polo, this is my friend Lu, who is very single and very emotionally available,” Carla says, and Lu is too stunned to correct her on the latter. Polo smiles at her, and they seemingly both agree to not make things weird by acknowledging the fact that they know each other. “Lu, this is Polo, my very serious high school ex-boyfriend who my mother still wants me to end up with.”

Polo laughs at that, holds out his hand for Lu to shake and nods at Carla. “My moms send their love, of course.”

Carla groans a little, then takes a step back. “Well listen, I have hosting duties to attend to, but I’m sure you’ll find things to bond about. Talk about your shared interest in my happiness!”

Carla saunters off, and Lu finds herself wanting to crawl into a hole and die. But she’s too calm and collected to let her embarrassment show, so she smiles at Polo (who’s name she didn’t know until two minutes ago, _god_ ) and hopes he’ll say something to make this less weird.

“Well, at least now I know you had a good excuse for leaving,” he says, and she rolls her eyes a little. A grin makes its way onto her lips, because he’s still charming, even when she’s mostly sober, so her taste in men can’t be that bad. After her last pick, that’s sort of refreshing to discover. She kind of thought there was something wrong with her. 

“You know how Carla gets about brunch — I couldn’t be late,” she laughs, and he nods, then takes a sip of his mimosa. He’s dressed really, really well and the blue of his shirt is reflected in the blue of his eyes which really have no business being this vibrant.

“So what are you doing after brunch?” He asks, flirting in an effortless way. “I think the bite mark on my neck and the scratches on my back leave room for improvement.”

She feigns offense. “Considering the lone handprint on my hip, I’d say you’re the one left with something to prove here.”

They’re kind of just staring at each other for a minute, the air a little too sexually charged for a random brunch at their mutual friend’s house, until Polo grabs her wrist softly and leads her towards the spread of brunch foods on the other side of the room.

“Eat your fill,” he says, popping a strawberry in his mouth. “You’ll need the energy.”

His dark blue eyes are boring into hers, his pupils slightly dilated, and Lu whines a little. That was probably the hottest thing anyone has ever said to her. She’s a little weak in the knees, but that might also be related to the heels she’s wearing and the way she’s already sore from last night.

They leave together about an hour later, without letting Carla in on their little secret, and Lu moans into his mouth when he instantly pushes her up against the elevator wall.

They’re in a car and then back at his place in no time, where he doesn’t waste even a second in getting her out of her clothes, pushing her down onto the edge of his mattress roughly. She eagerly pulls on his belt, then rips his shirt off of him and he laughs at her enthusiasm.

"I thought you said you're sore." His hand slides onto her hip, brushing over the handprint he left there last night, and a sense of deja vu comes over her. This is gonna be good.

She did say that, but that hardly seems important now, when he’s close enough for her to touch, with no other brunch guests to watch and judge them anymore.

Lu rolls onto her back, her fingers curling around his wrist to pull him with her. "Yeah, so you better go slowly."

He doesn’t, but she’s not sure she minds.


	19. Rebeka/Ander - "I'm pretty sure your mom hates me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the prompt was "I'm pretty sure your mom hates me" which this has basically nothing to do with but... oops? idk, I've always gotten bi vibes from Ander, so...

Ander isn’t even quite sure where he is right now. It’s a warm day, and he’s sitting propped up against a tree somewhere — maybe the park behind school? Who even knows anymore; Ander certainly doesn’t. The blunt Rebe rolled was a little stronger than he expected.  
  
Weed isn’t an exact science. That’s what his therapist always says. Well, she says it about therapy, but same thing, right?

Speaking of Rebeka, she’s currently got her head in his lap, and she’s staring at her locked phone smiling at absolutely nothing when she suddenly lets out a laugh. 

“I’m pretty sure your mom hates me.”

Ander’s a little too stoned to respond to that. “Dude.” 

“What?” Rebeka asks, and he’s either hallucinating or she’s now seriously scrolling through pictures of pizza on Google. Weren’t they gonna order pizza? Wait, can you order pizza to a park? Anyway. 

“My mom’s the principal, she doesn’t hate anyone.”  
  
Well, except for Marina — he’s pretty sure she hated Marina. So much for not speaking ill of the dead… Thinking it is probably okay. It’s been like, what, two years now? He can probably state negative facts about her.  


“Right, and I’m sure she doesn’t have a favorite child either,” Rebe replies, pushing her head back against his thigh to stare up at him.  
  
He giggles, which feels foreign, even to him. Probably not something he’d do sober.

“I’m an only child, Rebe.” 

“You know what I meant.”  
  
Then she puts her phone down on the grass and sits up a little to shrug off her school blazer. Yeah, actually, it’s getting kind of hot in the sun. They could move to a tree over in the shade, but moving sounds like too much hassle for the time being. He takes his shirt off, and she looks back at him and laughs.  
  
“Fucking male privilege,” she says, then reaches for the buttons on her white cropped button-down and slides it off her shoulders, leaving her in a pretty burgundy colored bra. He doesn't really care about nudity, and there's no one else around right now, so that's fine. Rebe puts her head back in his lap and he sort of runs a hand down her neck to play with her bra strap, just because it’s right there and it gives him something to do with his hands.  
  
Rebe kind of leans into his hand and sighs. “It’s a fucking shame you’re gay.”  
  
Of course she'd say that. She says shit like that all the time, is always sort of jokingly hitting on him, and before his hazy brain can stop him from doing it, Ander laughs and says, “I never said I was gay.”  
  
She sits up so fast, his hand is literally catapulted off her shoulder. “Wait, what?”  
  
Her reaction is exactly why he never bothered to mention this to anyone; he doesn’t like the attention. Now, she’s on her knees, facing him, literally eyeing him like he’s fucking Madonna walking around with her latest Ethiopian orphan in her arms or whatever. Outdated reference, but you get the point.  
  
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “I guess I prefer guys but… I mean, I’ve kissed girls.”  
  
Rebeka’s mouth falls open a little, like she is legitimately shocked to hear this, and he grins as he grabs her chin to playfully close it for her. She grabs his wrist and moves it away from her face. “You’ve _kissed_ girls…”  
  
Okay, semantics, but alright. “I have had sexual intercourse with women,” Ander says, all pseudo-scientific, and Rebeka literally hits him in the bare chest. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”  
  
“No,” she half-yells, totally trying for accusatory even though she sounds borderline delighted. “Were you ever gonna tell me about this??”  
  
At least they’re both super stoned, so neither of them will remember all the random details of today — like how she’s now leaning forward and grabbing his thigh, which is kind of making him feel things, or how he’s definitely staring at all the cleavage on display in her tiny little lace bralette. He can sort of see the outline of her nipples if he stares hard enough which… Which he needs to stop doing right now.  
  
“Why the fuck would I need to tell you about this,” Ander laughs. Really, him being into a select number of women isn’t really reason enough to alert the fucking presses. “What difference does it make?”  
  
“Dude,” she says, lets the word linger in the air and he has no idea where they go from here. She clears her throat, then squeezes the fabric of his beige cargo pants. “I love this color.”  
  
Way to be fucking obvious about changing the subject. She couldn’t be more obvious if she tried.  
  
“You love the color _beige_ ,” he states, sort of grinning down at her. “Just admit you wanna fuck me.”  
  
Okay, well, that came out way bolder than he meant it. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think he’s hitting on her which… Oh shit, maybe he is? Is that what they’re doing here? Fuck.  
  
It’s probably a good thing him and Omar are on a break. (On _another_ break…)  
  
Anyway, the way Rebeka is staring him straight in the eye is kind of scary. Or, like, scary in a really hot way. Her pupils are super fucking dilated, turning her eyes from green to almost black, and he can totally tell she’s trying to decide what to do now.  
  
He’s still feeling dazed and blissed out from the weed, which helps him stay calm, even as he contemplates having sex with one of his closest friends. That’s a thing friends do sometimes, right? Sleep with each other because they’ve both totally been curious about what the other is like in bed for the longest time?  
  
And yeah, he’s obviously been curious. On a superficial level, Rebeka is gorgeous, even though she puts a ton of effort into trying to hide the fact that she is by wearing extravagant outfits and intense makeup. He wouldn’t _mind_ seeing her naked.  
  
“We should…” Wow, he said that way too quietly. He feels like he’s sort of losing his nerve. “Should we…”  
  
Okay, but can she maybe say something? Or do something? The limited time frame in which they could’ve just started making out without having to admit they actually took the time to think this through has officially passed, so whatever happens now is gonna be a conscious decision they make. At least as conscious a decision you _can_ make when you’re really fucking high on a Tuesday afternoon in the public park.  


“Ander, you know I’m friends with Omar,” she starts, and he’s sure she’s gonna shut this shit down right now. That’s fine; maybe it’s for the best anyway. It’s sort of disappointing, if only because he really feels like kissing someone right now. It’s probably the weed. “Wait, do you think he’d care?”  
  
Yes, of course he would care. In the abstract sense that Omar is a possessive dick even when he has no right to be, he’s sure he’d be bothered no matter who Ander might sleep with. And look, Ander isn’t trying to be a dick here or anything, but he’s _technically_ single right now, and Omar has cheated on him enough times for this to be child’s play — this being the fact that he’s probably about to have sex with their mutual _female_ friend.  
  
Rebeka is scooting closer to him, kind of awkwardly crawling towards him on her knees. When she gets close enough to steady herself on his shoulders, she looks him in the eye, then glances at his lips and says, “Just say no.”  
  
“Say no to what,” he asks, and then she’s kissing him, pushing herself closer to him. God, he forgot how different this feels — kissing girls. Her skin is soft under his hands as he grabs her by the hips and pulls her into his lap.  
  
This isn’t exactly a well-hidden spot, so it’s definitely less than ideal for a hookup, but he kind of doesn’t really give a shit right now. She’s wearing a skirt — a recent addition to her wardrobe, because he knows for a fact he would’ve noticed if she’d worn skirts last year — so he doesn’t technically have to get her naked in the park to do this and… He should probably chill the fuck out. Live in the moment. If he only gets to do this once, he’s gonna make sure to enjoy it.  
  
She bites down on his lip as she grinds down on him, and he whimpers into her mouth, then pulls away to bury his face against her shoulder and laugh.  
  
“What?” She lets out a quiet giggle. He shrugs. “Stop ruining the best day of my life with your stupid laughter.”  
  
“Wow, are you always this rude to people you’re about to fuck? No wonder you’re single,” he’s grinning at her now, watching as she rolls her eyes at him indignantly.  
  
She leans in to kiss him briefly, and he seizes the moment to sneak a hand in between them to pinch her breast teasingly. Rebe scoffs, then shakes her head at him. “You know, this isn’t how I pictured this in my dreams.”  
  
Ander bites at her shoulder, dragging her bra strap down with his teeth. “Tell me more about these dreams…”  
  
The fact that they both clearly know this isn’t gonna happen again makes the whole thing so much hotter. Best trip of his life, for sure.  
  
Rebeka must be inclined to agree if the way she falls off his lap in a fit of laughter after is any indication.  
  
“I can’t believe I found out _by accident_ ,” she accuses, slapping his chest with the back of her wrist, which actually stings a little thanks to the vast collection of heavy gold bracelets on her arm.  
  
Ander reaches down to zip up his pants, then reaches for his shirt. “I’m fucking starving. Are we getting pizza or what?”  
  
Rebe nods, a sly grin on her lips. “Come on, hot stuff, you’re paying.”  
  
He throws an arm around her shoulders as they’re walking towards the small Italian place near campus, and she jokingly pushes him away. He’s glad things aren’t weird now.  
  
“You totally just wanna go for the breadsticks,” he says, and she nods eagerly. In her defense, the breadsticks at this place are kind of amazing. “You’re such a cheap date.”  
  
She sticks her tongue out at him, then calls him a dumbass, and he throws his head back to laugh at how absurd this whole situation is.  
  
At least they’ve gotten that out of their system now.


	20. Carla/Samuel - “Are you planning to stay glued to my side the whole day?”

She’s back in Madrid for the summer, doing an internship to satisfy a college requirement. Of course, she somehow managed to pick the one school in all of America that’d actually require she get some real-world work experience.  
  
It’s mostly been nice to be so far away from family and everyone she knows for the past three years. California is always at least twelve hours of flight time away from home, not to mention any layovers she might have to deal with. That part sucks, sometimes. But UCLA has been fine. She’s majoring in Economics, with a minor in art history, just because she felt like studying something she might actually care about, too. 

The internship came about because Guzmán’s dad knows the CEO of this big property development company through some shady backdoor work dealings, and when she mentioned she’s just looking to do something in the business development sphere at dinner last winter, he said he might know someone who can help.  
  
Now it’s been six weeks of visiting customer sites, coding excel sheets so complicated, she’s sure no one will ever fully appreciate the work that went into them and conversations with the intimidating head of new developments. She’d like to think she’s settled in alright.  
  
In some weird turn of events, the highlights of her days are the brief water cooler chats she has with Samuel, the office IT guy. His desk is right next to the kitchen, and literally, the only reason Carla is drinking enough water at work these days is how that gives her an excuse to pass by his desk and flirt with him a little.  
  
This isn’t the most corporate job, and she’ll be gone again in two months anyway, so would it really be so bad if she… Would it be so bad if she let herself take innocent, cheery, wide-eyed Samuel out for dinner sometime? She’s still working up the nerve to ask him out.  
  
Everything is on track for her to actually go for it. She’s got her silly line prepared, knows exactly how she’ll play this, and she’s even decided on what to wear for the occasion. Lu would be so proud of her for planning it out this thoroughly.  
  
So everything’s ready to go, except she’s at dinner with Guzman and Nadia the night before the big day and she just… faints. She has no idea why. She’s been drinking enough fluids, she’s eating regular meals, she isn’t particularly stressed or exhausted, and yet she still wakes up on the tiled floor of the restaurant to see Guzman hovering over her, frantically hitting her cheek.  
  
It’s kind of giving her unpleasant pool party flashbacks.  
  
Nadia and Guzman are both total pushovers, so of course they decide to take her to the hospital. She’s fully conscious, and she can even walk unassisted, so it seems ridiculously over the top.  
  
“You have a minor concussion,” the doctor at the ER finally tells her after they spent three fucking hours sitting around in the waiting room because there are _obviously_ more pressing injuries to attend to than her mild headache from hitting her head as she slid off a chair. “The fainting was likely just a bout of fatigue.”  
  
“Does that mean I can go home now?”  
  
Nadia left two hours ago because she had to go help her mom with something, so it’s just Carla and Guzmán in the examination room.  
  
“Just take it easy for the next couple of days, no strenuous exercise,” he glances at Guzmán next to her like this somehow concerns him, too. “I assume your boyfriend understands what I’m trying to say here.”  
  
Oh god. Are they gonna bother correcting this old, presumptuous doctor? They glance at each other, and Guzmán just grins at the man in front of him and nods. “Got it, doc.”  
  
Guzmán, ever the gentleman, drives her home and has the nerve to wink at her and say, “Night, baby,” when she hugs him goodbye. It’s been kind of nice, having him around this summer. They were friends once upon a time; maybe they will be again.  
  
When she unlocks the door to her apartment — no, she wasn’t gonna stay with her parents for four whole months — she sighs at the sight of the outfit she’d laid out for tomorrow’s work shenanigans. Maybe she’ll have to postpone that plan.  
  
But she wakes up feeling pretty cheerful. The headache from the night before has subsided, and after almost nine hours of sleep, she feels well-rested. Concussion be damned; she’s gonna put on the cute summer-y dress she bought because it felt like the sort of flowery, dreamy thing a guy like Samuel might be into and woo him.  
  
It’s almost lunchtime when she saunters over to his desk and starts tapping her fingers on top of his screen impatiently. “Wanna grab lunch with me?”  
  
Samu slides his headset down around his neck as he smiles. “I brought food, actually.”  
  
Well; fine — she’ll just get something and eat in the kitchen with him. “So come accompany me on my walk to that Japanese place around the corner.”  
  
She’s got a ramen craving.  
  
Samu shrugs, grabs his access badge and his phone, and motions for her to lead the way. See, the first part of her plan went off without any major hitches. She decides to save the second part of the plan for another day.  
  
“Did you make that?” He’s digging into a portion of steaming hot macaroni, served in a blue Tupperware container that has seen better days. He nods around a mouthful of pasta. “I didn’t realize you knew how to cook.”  
  
“Pouring a jar of sauce onto pasta hardly counts as cooking,” he replies, then grins when she uses her spoon to steal a bit of pasta from his box. Well, it’s not _terrible_. Certainly more edible than anything she might come up with if she was left to her own devices in the kitchen.  
  
“So what did you get up to last night?”  
  
Carla groans at the memory. “I managed to somehow faint in a crowded restaurant and then spent the rest of my night in the ER, only for the doctor to tell me I have a mild concussion.”  
  
“Holy shit, are you okay?”  
  
She laughs. “I’m absolutely fine.”  
  
He still looks concerned, so she presses him on that. “My mom is a nurse. I’ve heard too many fluke accident stories of concussed people just passing out and dying to be calm about this.”  
  
Yeah, he’s definitely not being calm about this. It’s kind of funny. They chat about work a little, then about their plans for the future, and Carla is pretty sad when time comes for her to head back to her desk and prepare for her afternoon meetings.  
  
She’s on her way out the door at 5:30, ready to go home and watch the next few episodes of the latest random Netflix show she got into, when she hears Samu yell after her. “Wait up.”  
  
Well, okay then. Maybe she won’t even have to ask him out herself; maybe he finally took a hint. That doesn’t seem to be his forte.  
  
He falls into step with her and smiles at her as they wait for the elevator.  
  
“Leaving so soon?”  
  
She shrugs. “Not in the mood for overtime today. You?”  
  
“My job’s pretty hard to do after hours, when there’s no one around to complain about how their screen _‘isn’t working’_ only to realize it wasn’t even plugged in.”  
  
Carla laughs. Being the resident IT guy people go to with their stupid questions must get seriously annoying; she admires his people skills.  
  
“So, uh, what are you up to tonight?”  
  
Is he awkwardly asking her out? Is that what he’s doing?  
  
“Not much, just thought I’d feel bad for myself and use this concussion I supposedly have to sit on the couch and do nothing.”  
  
The elevator doors open, and Samu waits for her to step out first. “Can I join you?”  
  
“Very smooth,” she smirks at him because he clearly just hit on her. (Right?) “Any particular reason why you want our first date to happen on my mediocre couch?”  
  
It’s his turn to grin. “I didn’t realize this was gonna be a date.”  
  
He’s wittier than she expected him to be.  
  
They order in, and Samuel’s sort of hovering near her, maybe because he’s nervous and trying to cover that up with politeness. It’s pretty cute. She gets up to open the door for the pizza guy, and he jumps to his feet, saying something about helping her carry things.  
  
When they’ve set the pizza down on the little coffee table in front of her couch, she groans. “Ugh, I forgot the wine. Give me a sec.”  
  
She walks over to the kitchen, and when she looks over her shoulder to see him following her, she decides enough is enough. Crossing her arms in front of her chest, she turns around to stare at him. “Are you planning to stay glued to my side all day?”  
  
Samuel shrugs. “You’re concussed.”  
  
Oh, so _that’s_ what this is about.  
  
“Did you seriously invite yourself over to my apartment because you heard about my _very mild_ concussion and decided someone needed to check on me?”  
  
He nods, then uses what’s left of his boyish charm to smile at her as he steps closer to her. “Saved me from having to ask you out the normal way.”  
  
Leave it to her to somehow be into the over the top way he delivers that line. Her taste in men could use some refining. Not now, though; now she’s a little busy grabbing his hand in hers and leaning in to kiss him.  
  
He instantly kisses her back, pushing her against the kitchen counter as he goes.  
  
“Our pizza’s gonna get cold,” she says on a breath between kisses, and he shrugs his shoulders like he couldn’t care less. “And the doctor said I should refrain from _strenuous exercise_ for a while.”  
  
That instantly sobers him up, and he pulls away to look her up and down with concern in his eyes.  
  
“Jesus, you really like taking care of people,” she states.  
  
Honestly, Carla doesn’t really mind. It wouldn’t be the worst to have someone looking out for her once in a while, for however long this summer fling might last.  
  
Samuel looks smug when he runs a hand through her hair and says, “Maybe I just really like taking care of you.”  
  
It’ll take some time for her to get used to his intense one-liners.  



	21. Carla/Polo/Lu - season 1 trio rewrite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rated M, trigger warning for brief use of a gay slur.

Polo has no idea what to make of any of this.

This was his idea, he reminds himself. He had been the one to suggest it. But as he’s standing outside the door of the guest room at Guzmán’s house, watching Carla kiss someone that isn’t him through a crack in the door and a strategically placed mirror, he’s unsure whether this was an idea he might come to regret.

Carla had been a little too quick to agree. Too quick for someone who’s never thought about having sex with someone other than him. He can’t blame her for that; it’s normal to have sexual desires that you can’t quite satisfy inside of a relationship. He might blame her for the person she chose to do all this with.

Now he watches from his spot at the door. Watches as Carla confidently beckons someone that isn’t him to come closer, hears her say filthy words that are usually directed at him, and when she’s finally naked and writhing beneath someone else, Polo feels the most conflicted he’s ever felt.

This is fucking hot. That’s the overwhelming feeling. Watching Carla’s eyes flutter close, hearing the sounds she’s making, some of them sounds he’s never been able to get her to make... Probably the hottest thing that’s ever happened to him.

He just isn’t sure she should be this comfortable fucking her female best friend.

“I love you more than ever,” he tells her later, which really isn’t true. He loves her the same as ever, which is a whole lot, but he’s feeling very insecure tonight. The face she made when Lu made her come for the second time is one he won’t forget anytime soon. “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep over tonight?”

Carla smiles, then shakes her head and leans towards him for a quick kiss. It’s an awkward angle, because she’s in the back of the car with the window rolled down.

“I’ll see you Sunday, okay?”

Right. Sunday brunch with her parents. Some semblance of normalcy. That puts his mind at ease. She’s not taking Lu to brunch, she’s taking _him_.

He replays the image of Carla and Lu, naked and pressed together, in his mind until he drifts off for a night of fitful sleep.

——

When he gets to Carla’s place for brunch, she kisses him at the door. She tugs him closer by the shirt, and he should tell her not to because it’ll wrinkle, but that’s a fair price to pay for some good old reassurance in the form of physical contact.

He’s holding her hand as they walk into the dining room, and right before they round the corner to where he’s sure her parents are already waiting, she whispers, “Don’t be mad, alright?”

What? He feels dread coursing through his veins. He would’ve preferred if she hadn’t said anything at all. He smiles at her shyly, then shakes his head; he won’t be mad, no matter what. He’s too worried to be anything but nervous.

Lu is sitting across from Teodoro, gesturing wildly with the glass of orange juice in her hand, and _oh_ — is this what he shouldn’t be mad about?

“Polo,” Lu quips. “Nice of you to join us.”

There’s a reason why Lu is strictly Carla’s friend. Whenever he spends too much time listening to her passive-aggressive jabs, he winds up wanting to call her out on her shit. No one triggers his angry side quite like Lu.

Carla’s parents laugh at Lu’s remark, and Carla is grinning at him, so he plays off the pointed implication behind it and sits down next to Lu, waiting for Carla to take her seat across from him before he reaches for a croissant.

This is no time to be insecure. Showing weakness in front of Teodoro is bad enough, but Lu? Fuck, she’ll eat him alive.

For a second, he considers being an immature brat about this, imagines telling Carla’s father about the indecent scenes he witnessed Friday night. Maybe he wouldn’t like Lu so much anymore if he knew how she’d defiled his daughter, how she’d looked like she’s spent all her life waiting for a moment to get to make Carla scream out her name.

Brunch passes with minimal patronizing remarks from his in-laws, and Lu hugs Carla tight at the door as they say their goodbyes. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth now.

Carla takes him up to her room, tells her parents they have homework to finish, which is a pretty absurd lie considering he came here without any sort of bag that might hold a laptop or books. Naive is an odd way to describe calculating Teodoro Rosón, but Polo thinks it’s apt.

Her bed is unmade when they walk into the room, which means she slept in too late for Mirella to fix it before setting up for brunch. The sheets are wrinkled, and he can tell both sides of the bed were used last night.

“Did you guys have a sleepover?”

Fuck, the implication of that is so different now. What the hell did he do to deserve any of this.

Carla closes her bedroom door with a thud, then flips the lock and smirks at him. Her arms come to rest on his shoulders, her fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck and he instantly feels himself breathe easier at all this affection. It’s crazy how easy it is to reassure him with simple touches.

“We did,” Carla says. He has questions about that. Before he can voice any of them, she shushes him, then leans in for a kiss. “You know I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“You certainly seemed to enjoy doing it to me on Friday night.”

An eye roll. The most obvious telltale sign that Carla is frustrated with him. “And you didn’t? You fucking loved watching me with her. Don’t deny it.”

She moves one of her hands lower until she’s got a good grip on him, then uses her other hand to unbutton his shirt and grins.

“Come on, we’ve got _homework_ to get to.”

He doesn’t get around to asking her why she looked so comfortable kissing her best friend. (He doesn’t want to know.)

——

“I wanna do it again.” She whispers it in his ear, then grins at him when she notices him tense up.

This is what he was afraid of. They’re in math class, all wrapped up in each other because one of the key perks of sitting next to your girlfriend in class is getting to cuddle.

Their teacher says something about the exam next week, and he glances at Carla nervously. What is he gonna tell her now? He wouldn’t mind seeing her with Lu again. Definitely one of the hottest things he’s ever gotten to witness, even if he wasn’t a part of it.

He nods reluctantly, and it gets him one of those beaming smiles Carla reserves for special occasions, so that was probably the right call.

After class, Carla hooks her arm through Lu’s and says, “Wanna come over after school and study?”

Lu looks over at Guzmán like she needs his permission, and dear god, Polo wants to strangle his best friend sometimes. Especially when he treats Lu like this; like an accessory.

“Do you mind, baby? I know you wanted to go see that movie,” Lu runs a hand through Guzman’s hair, both ruining and fixing the style at once.

“Go ahead. I’ll just hang out with Polo, right?”

Polo doesn’t allow himself to falter. He needs to come up with a good excuse now, or else he really will have to spend the afternoon with Guzmán while Carla spends it... in more pleasurable ways.

He shakes his head. “I’ve got to get home. My moms are having friends over.”

Carla winks at him when their friends aren’t looking, and he lets the girls go ahead, then tells his driver to take him to Carla’s house about fifteen minutes after they left.

It’s Tuesday, and he knows that means Beatriz is at book club all afternoon. Teodoro usually plays golf after work on Tuesdays, and maybe the fact that Polo has memorized his girlfriend’s parents’ schedule says more about how he feels about them than he’d like.

That definitely means Carla will be taking advantage of the empty house — he won’t find the girls upstairs in her room. He says hi to Mirella on his way in, tells her Carla is expecting him, then practically runs towards the pool. He knows it’s where they’ll be because it’s where he and Carla usually spend their Tuesday nights.

For a minute, he lingers in the shadows, watches as Carla kisses Lu and absentmindedly wonders if she knows he’s watching. If she cares he’s watching at all, or if she’d still be doing this if he had gotten stuck in traffic on his way over. The obvious answer makes him want to put a stop to all of this before it’s too late.

Carla unbuttons Lu’s blouse, then moves a hand under it to rid her of her bra, and Polo feels the weirdest combination of turned on and possessive rage he’s ever felt. Maybe he should just walk over and act like this was a game to him all along; put Lu in her place a little.

It’s not the best idea, and he knows Carla will be mad, but he does it anyway. Before he knows it, he’s quietly opening the door, then walks towards the girls until he’s close enough to not have to yell when he addresses them.

“Hey you two,” he says, his voice purposefully casual, and the girls jump apart. Carla looks fucking livid, turning to glare at him right away, while Lu looks confused, glancing between the two of them. Her red lipstick is smudged, and Polo feels the sudden need to bite at her mouth and make her bleed. Is he going crazy? Fuck.

Carla crosses her arms in front of her chest and hisses, “Polo,” like he’s a rowdy dog that needs to be scolded. He shouldn’t find that so attractive.

Lu’s chest is still on display, but she doesn’t seem shy about that at all, just fixes both of them with an exasperated look and asks, “Is someone gonna tell me what the fuck is going on?”

Oh, he’ll gladly fill her in. Carla holds up a hand in warning, but it’s too late. Polo’s mind is made up. It’s not his fault Lu has always made a point out of being weirdly competitive with him. He’s gonna fucking win this round.

“What’s wrong? You don’t mind me watching, do you? I assumed Carla had told you about that,” he finishes off the statement by grinning at Lu meanly, and god, it’s intoxicating, watching Little Miss Montesinos fall off her fucking high horse, to grovel right at his feet. “Guess you’re not as close as I thought.”

He knows Carla wants to slap him. He can tell from the way her weight shifts a little as she makes a fist with her hand. Whatever; he can deal with an angry girlfriend if it means her best friend knows what her place in all this is. Polo will not be replaced.

But this is still Lu we’re talking about. He didn’t expect her to just take this well and move on — he can’t wait to see her angry outburst.

Lu takes two confident steps towards him, then pulls him closer by the belt loops and he feels a little heady with arousal all of a sudden. What the fuck is she doing?

“Pathetic,” Lu mutters, her tone of voice dismissive. He can tell Carla is watching them closely, and he lets himself wonder whether Carla would mind if he kissed Lu. Probably not, right? It would only be fair.

The brunette in front of him must have noticed him staring at Carla over her shoulder, because she grabs his wrist, hard, then moves her other hand so she can grab onto his chin roughly. “Fucking look at me when I’m talking to you, Polito.”

Fuck. Why is that nickname suddenly a turn on for him? He really needs to get a grip. Carla is giving him a prompting look, like he shouldn’t disobey Lu if she’s this angry, so he makes eye contact with her again and smirks. “What, you’re gonna call me names when you’re the fucking dyke in the room? Talk about being pathetic.”

Lu looks livid now, and her grip on his chin gets more painful, her nails digging into his skin. He has no idea where any of this is going.

“At least I didn’t need another girl to fuck my girlfriend right. Did you see her on Friday? It’s obvious you can’t make her come like that.”

Carla sort of gasps next to them, but he’s too into this to care now. She may as well not even be here at this point.

“You know, I’m sorry Lu, you’re right,” he says, the most fake sincere look on his face, aside from the smug smile that won’t quite go away. “Go ahead. Fuck her again. Let her use you like the whore you are. That’s what Guzmán thinks of you as right? His whore.”

Lu slaps him before he manages to duck away. It stings his cheek, and he grins at her. Yeah, he probably deserved that. They end up staring at each other, a little too close for comfort, before Carla steps towards them and puts a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Are you two done here?”

Is he? Not really. He fucking loves fighting with Lu, he just usually doesn’t allow himself to because he’s always been a little afraid of her. The playing field is even now, though, and Lu looks way too turned on to walk away from this.

Lu reaches over to brush a strand of Carla’s hair behind her ear softly, a gesture so gentle, it feels out of place right now. The girls share a look, and then Lu is all up in his space, kissing him aggressively as Carla makes quick work of his belt and zipper.

Polo figures if they’re gonna ruin their relationship over this, they may as well go out with a bang. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been kind of obsessed with this version of the trio for a while, so let me know if you want to see more of them!


	22. Rebeka/Nano - pre-canon run in while Nano works for Sandra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [UniversallyEcho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniversallyEcho/pseuds/UniversallyEcho) who wisely asked for a pre-canon Rebe/Nano story for her birthday because she "knew I wouldn't ever write it" otherwise. Hope this is what you had in mind!

None of this is right, but Rebeka is used to a little moral ambiguity.   
  
Nothing’s really been right since her mother got involved with shady drug pushing anyway.  
  
Look, this isn’t some fucking over the top after school special. It’s her life. Her father died three years ago, and Sandra has been steadily climbing the ranks of the underworld with the little business she set up from the comfort of their shitty two-bedroom home in the city ever since.  
  
Rebeka doesn’t really care anymore. She minds her own business. She ignores the increasingly sketchy men Sandra invites over to _talk business_. (Ew.) She avoids them, keeps her head down, goes to school.  
  
Summer break, she spends in Valencia with her cousin and aunt, her dad’s side of the family, so they’re, like, distinctly more normal than what she’s used to. She’s on the train back to Madrid in August when she suddenly feels a tad guilty about how she sometimes wishes her mom wasn’t her mom.  
  
Usually, the people Sandra does business with are shifty looking. Shifty, definitely shady, and… Ugly. She’s not shallow, okay? But they always exude sketchy energy and go for these outfits that are meant to make them look inconspicuous when really they just end up looking like stupid teenage gangstas who all wear the same exact model of black Adidas sweats. It’s fucking laughable.  
  
There’s a guy leaning against the wall next to her front door when she finally pulls her suitcase out of the elevator that's seen better days. He doesn’t look much older than her, she thinks. Early twenties max. She’s seventeen, which makes the way he slowly, shamelessly looks her up and down feel mildly illegal, but also incredibly amusing.  
  
“You here to see Sandra too?”  
  
Rebeka rolls her eyes. Of course. “What’s it to you?”  
  
“Just didn’t know the girls around here looked like you.”  
  
She needs to get out her keys and go inside. There’s no need to flirt with the undoubtedly sketchy drug dealer waiting outside of her home, even if his chiseled jawline is fascinating as fuck. He’s in a simple white shirt — straining against what she can tell is mostly muscle — and on a scale from Sandra’s usual drug connections to ten, he’s an eleven.  
  
Grinning at his blatant attempt at flirting, she steps closer to him and searches her pocket for the key to the front door, then dangles it in front of his face. “Sandra’s my mother.”  
  
“Shit,” he says, looking her right in the eye, and she feels herself get weak in the knees. What the actual fuck is happening and why has she not put a stop to it? “Makes sense. You look fucking intense.”  
  
Groaning, she reaches out a hand and pushes at his chest, then unlocks the door and steps inside. On a whim, she stops in her tracks and turns to look back at him.  
  
“You coming in or what?”  
  
In hindsight, that’ll be the moment she’ll pinpoint when everything goes to shit and she needs something to blame it on. She’ll blame it all on his stupid fucking cheekbones.  
  
**  
  
He’s twenty-two. She finds out when they’re hanging out back behind the apartment complex, their shoulders brushing as they partake in some of the merchandise he came over to procure from Sandra.  
  
Nothing wrong with smoking a little weed with a stranger on a hazy August afternoon. This is what seventeen-year-olds are supposed to do, right? Make reckless decisions. Maybe she can act her age for once, leave the stupid grown-up version of herself that lost the ability to make snap judgments at the door. That was what she settled on when her father died and she decided feelings are fucking stupid because all they do is hurt, in the end.  
  
A little spontaneity would do her some good.  
  
He tells her his name is Nano, mentions that he’s been working odd jobs to help his mother keep a roof over their head and it’s shitty of her to mention that he’s clearly made it in life if he’s working for her mother now, but she does it anyway. She’s pragmatic; if he wants to hang out with her he’ll have to put up with her observations. The way he chuckles and bites his lip as he shakes his head all self-deprecating is a good place to start.  
  
He sounds protective when he talks about a younger brother who’s still in school — probably her age, by the sound of things — and when she tells him that’s oddly sweet, he throws his head back to laugh. She really likes how uninhibited he is.  
  
“What about you, _Rebeka_?” He draws out her name like it’s the most delectable word in the dictionary, and she feels special. God, he definitely can’t be hurting for female attention, judging by the easy and effortless ways in which he’s coming onto her.  
  
For some reason, she struggles to find her words. There just isn’t that much to say about her life. It’s pretty chill, and she’s not unhappy at all, but it’s nothing to write home about.  
  
“Only child, and I like it that way. Dad died a couple years back, mom’s — well, you met her.”  
  
Nano nods, taking another drag from the spliff they’re sharing. He blows smoke directly in her face, then smirks when she glares at him a little.  
  
“I asked about you,” he says, and the hand that isn’t holding what little is left of their afternoon treat goes out to trace a line down her arm. “What are you into?”  
  
That’s a dangerous question. She raises an eyebrow, then grabs the spliff from his fingers and takes one final hit before crushing it beneath the sole of her shoe.  
  
“Nice fucking try.”  
  
She ignores the way he checks out her ass when she gets up to head back home.  
  
**  
  
He’s back the next week, on a Friday afternoon this time.  
  
School’s back in session, which is a real blast, obviously, and she’s tired from a week’s worth of forced socialization after a whole summer of limited human contact. It’s fucking tough, being an extroverted introvert because people keep thinking you _want_ to be approached. Really, she just wants people to leave her the fuck alone.  
  
While he’s in Sandra’s little office space — at their dimly lit dining room table — she ignores him and watches whatever shitty reality show is on TV. She isn’t going to interact with him in front of her mother. That’d lead to teasing, and conversations so weird, she’s not equipped to handle them today.  
  
When he leaves, he glances at her and she completely avoids his eyes. She hears the front door close behind him, and gets up slowly, mumbling something about meeting friends nearby. Sandra just tells her to have fun and doesn’t ask any further questions because she never does. It’s great, for the most part, to get to do whatever she wants, but sometimes she wouldn’t mind having her mother take an actual interest in her life.  
  
Predictably, Nano’s waiting for her on the bench they sat on last week, a six-pack of beer at his feet.  
  
“Ice queen,” he greets, handing her a bottle. “Thought you were mad at me or something.”  
  
Dumbass. “Didn’t think you want her to know we hang out.”  
  
Nano reaches over and opens her bottle with his, then smirks at her in a way that makes his jawline look unfairly good. It kind of always looks good. She wants to run her fingers over it, wants to… Leave it to her fucking deprived self to develop a full-on jaw fetish just because the guy she’s been flirting with has a really nice one.  
  
“Is that what we’re doing? Hanging out?”  
  
“Don’t see anyone else around. Do you?”  
  
"Well, you could do a hell of a lot worse than me," he tells her. He clinks his bottle of beer against hers and she shakes her head. Of course he’d think that.

"I could do a hell of a lot better, too."  
  
**  
  
Turns out he’s a terrible influence.  
  
He’s started coming around every Friday, and for a couple of weeks in a row, she follows him out the door and spends several hours just hanging out in whatever public place they find themselves in.  
  
In week two, he calls her, “Fucking crazy,” after she shoots down his tirade about how capitalism is the source of all evil, and she kind of beams up at him, just because he manages to make the term crazy sound complimentary. Then he kisses her — fucking finally, honestly — and she spends a solid thirty minutes in his lap, giving anyone who might walk by a pretty spectacular show.  
  
She’s not looking for anything serious, so she doesn’t really give a shit about whether they label this random thing they’ve got going on.  
  
Nano’s a grown-ass man. There’s no way he wants to be with her, not really, but they get along, and Rebe likes herself better when she’s with him. She feels slightly unhinged, a little more reckless, and she spends the remaining six days of every week chasing how he made her feel on the one.  
  
Maybe it’s because he makes her feel more like the version of herself she wants others to see.  
  
He asks for her number in late September, when spending time outside starts getting too cold, and she still hasn’t gotten him naked, so this better be a stepping stone to that. She needs to get laid or else she might die. She’s never been this sexually frustrated in her life.  
  
The Tuesday after that, he texts her an address at eight in the morning, right when she’s about to leave for school.  
  
_I have class_ she texts back, but she’s already put her book bag down on her chair again, has already taken off her jeans so she can find a slightly nicer set of matching underwear to put on.  
  
_I have needs_ is what he replies with, and she thinks it’s unfair how he just gets to say shit like that. Rebeka aspires to be that shameless. Maybe this’ll be a good exercise in being blunt about what she wants.  
  
She plugs the address into Google Maps and laughs when she sees it's a fifteen-minute walk away. Of course he lives in a shitty area, too.  
  
It takes her a minute to come up with an okay response, and even after she’s hit send, she’s still cringing at herself.  
  
_Give me 20 mins. Don’t start without me_  
  
On the walk over, she psychs herself out a little. Not just because of her pathetic texting game, but because she’s nervous, now that she knows this thing she’s been looking forward to for weeks is actually happening.  
  
Rebeka isn’t exactly inexperienced. She’s hooked up at parties, and she even dated someone for a couple of weeks last year. She knows all about how the, um, mechanics of the whole thing work, she’s just suddenly worried whether she’ll live up to Nano’s undoubtedly high expectations. The last thing she wants is for him to think of her as some stupid little girl who doesn’t know her left from her right.  
  
He’s shirtless when he opens the door for her, and she lets herself stare at his abs for a minute, just lets her eyes linger on the defined lines of his stomach. She’s absolutely leering at him, and he clearly loves it, judging by the boyish grin on his face.  
  
“I’m not paying you to stare,” he greets, then totally flexes his arms on purpose as he grabs onto the frame of the door with one hand.  
  
“You’re not paying me at all, asshole.”  
  
Nano takes a few steps back, and she follows him inside. When he kisses her, she whines into his mouth and just barely manages to pull away before she loses herself in that feeling.  
  
“Where’s your mom?”  
  
“Work.”  
  
“Your brother?”  
  
“At school, obviously.”  
  
Right, of course. At school, where she’s supposed to be too. Is it bad that she doesn’t give a single shit about skipping class? She’s totally forgotten about that already.  
  
He says her name the way he always does, the way that makes her toes curl and her eyes blink a little faster, and then they’re kissing again, egging each other on with touches that aren’t ever quite enough.  
  
Their clothes get left by the wayside, discarded on the floor on the way to his room, and when he finally picks her up and throws her down on his bed, she’s completely naked, breathing out his name on an impatient sigh.  
  
This is a really bad idea, but it's hard to care when there are orgasms at stake.  
  
**  
  
She starts skipping more and more school to see him.  
  
It’s not like her education was ever particularly important to her. She does okay in school, mostly — that’s not it. Really, she just sees no other way to get Nano alone, and now that she’s fucked him once, she’s definitely not just gonna stop.  
  
This is kind of the only way they get to see each other. She lives with her mom and he lives with his — daytime hookups when his family is out of the house are the easiest way to solve their utter lack of privacy at home. Sandra’s schedule is unpredictable so it’s just easier to spend time at his place.  
  
They manage to carry on until early November.  
  
She gets home from school and nearly jumps out of her skin when she sees Sandra sitting in her usual spot at the dining table, a cigarette in hand as she stares right at Rebeka. She doesn’t like that look one bit.  
  
“Sit down,” Sandra says, her voice sharp, and Rebe walks over and sits down — it’s not like she’s got any other options. Her jacket falls to the floor with a thud. “Your teacher called to ask if you’ve been sick.”  
  
Shit. Her mother never bothers with lectures, but when she does, it’s fucking terrifying.  
  
“Are you sick?”  
  
There’s no point in lying now. She shakes her head and avoids Sandra’s menacing gaze.  
  
“You’re not gonna see him anymore.”  
  
This conversation is all of her worst nightmares wrapped into one. How the hell does Sandra know about Nano? They’ve never even spoken to each other in front of her. It's worrying, maybe, that having her mother know things about her personal life feels like such a horrific violation of her independence. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Sweetie, please. Don’t make this worse. I get what you see in him, he’s very _delicious_ ,” Sandra trails off, and Rebeka makes sure to roll her eyes at her. “But he’s got a criminal record. Don’t let the pretty face fool you.”

“Stop.”

The way her mother scrunches up her nose resembles pity, and Rebeka hates that more than anything.

“We’re moving, and you won’t see him again, and that’s final.”

There’s too much to unpack there, too many truths she is refusing to accept. The fateful move Sandra has been teasing all year still isn’t finalized, so Rebeka knows that’s months away, if it ever happens at all. And it’s not like her mother can actually keep her from seeing Nano, right?

She’s definitely channeling her inner seventeen-year-old when she grabs her phone and keys and just runs out the door, tears brimming in her eyes. They’re angry tears. On her way downstairs, she dials Nano’s number, then groans when she gets his voicemail instead.

Motherfucker. Fine, she’ll just have to knock on his door unannounced and pray he’s home.

She doesn’t just walk, she runs there. In her haste to get away from her mother, she’s forgotten to grab her jacket, and the running helps keep her warm, too.  
  
It’s funny, honestly, how she’s more upset about her mother meddling in her business than she is about the prospect of not getting to see the guy she’s been seeing anymore.

When she gets to his door, she’s about to knock, except then there’s a hand on her shoulder. Rebe doesn’t bother checking to see whether his family might be around, lurking behind the front door, before she turns around and hugs him so tight, she’s sure he’s struggling to breathe.

“Missed me, huh? What’s up with you?”

She shakes her head where it’s buried against his shoulder, just breathes in deep and wills herself to forget about today. What are the odds her mother wasn’t just bluffing anyway?

“Can I come in?”

Nano pulls back, then brushes a hand through her hair and nods when he sees the look in her eyes.

“We’ll have to sneak past mom,” he says, reaching for her hand. “Samu’s at work.”

His mother ends up noticing her on the way in, so they stop to small talk, and she seems fine. Stressed and slightly neurotic, but normal otherwise. (Rebeka’s standards for mothering are low these days...)

Pilar glances at Nano in warning when he says they’re going to his room, and he says, “To talk, mom, Christ,” like they aren’t absolutely going to be doing more than just talking in a matter of minutes. Rebe is upset — she’s definitely angling for some good ole comfort in the form of physical touching.

Once in his room, Rebeka instantly pushes his jacket off his shoulders and goes in for his belt, then practically forces the shirt over his head. She’s so in the zone, she doesn’t even notice he’s trying to get her attention until he grabs both of her wrists and tugs hard enough to hurt.

“Slow down, Rebe,” he tells her, eyes unwavering on hers. She loves how he never uses pet names. It just makes the way he says her name all the more purposeful. “What the hell happened?”

She tries to get away from him, reaches for the button on her jeans but he stops her. This isn’t what they do. They talk, sure, and things tend to lean slightly emotional when they’re both tired and sated and all cuddled up, but this feels too monumental all of the sudden.

“Sandra knows,” is all Rebeka manages in the end, and he kisses her instantly like he’s trying to make her forget the words that just left her lips by claiming them with his own.

There isn’t anything else to say, and he doesn’t try to make things better with words, just touches her the way she likes and makes her forget. And it works, too — she doesn’t think about her mother again until her head is resting on Nano’s chest, her lungs working hard to get her breathing back to normal after the physical exertion.

“She said something,” Nano says, voice low, his fingers dancing over her shoulder. “What did she tell you?”

Fine. She’ll bite. “She said you’re a terrible influence because you have a criminal record.”

He’s quiet for a moment, too quiet, quieter than he should be if what Sandra said isn’t true.

Rebeka tries again, says, “She’s a fucking liar,” but the lack of reaction is the same. It’s not like— she didn’t think he’s a _good_ person. She’s known he sells drugs in her mother’s name since the day they met, so she shouldn’t be surprised that he’s had run-ins with the law. And yet...

“I do,” he finally says, defensive. “Does that bother you?”

She sits up to look at him. When his eyes trail down her neck and linger on her exposed chest, she grabs his neck roughly. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

It should bother him. Nano’s too street-smart to end up rotting away in jail. But he shrugs his shoulders, resigned to whatever life has in store for him, even if it’s completely within his control to change his fate.

It’s Friday, she realizes, so he’s supposed to be over at Sandra’s right now to pick up his weekly supply. There’s something not quite right about him missing that to be with her.

“She talked to you too,” Rebe says, realization dawning on her. “Tell me what she said.”

Nano puts an arm behind his head and sighs. “We’ve agreed to end our working relationship.”

“She threatened you.”

“Empty threats.”

Rebeka isn’t so sure about that. Sandra is a little too into holding grudges to just let this sort of thing go.

Really, Nano’s got the right idea when he kisses her instead of keeping this conversation going.

When she falls asleep next to him a few hours later, she has no idea it’s the last time she’ll see him for a while.

***

She finds out from his mother when she can’t get ahold of him on the phone for over a week and just shows up at his house one day. Pilar is visibly upset, and Rebeka keeps her composure, just hugs her and thanks her for letting her know.

When she gets home, she’s fucking livid.

“You had him arrested? You had someone arrested because you didn’t like that he was spending time with your daughter? That’s fucking psychotic!”

Sandra just lights a cigarette and sits in her usual spot, and Rebe hates this, hates how her mother is just able to let words linger sometimes. This would be a lot more cathartic if she could count on a screaming match, a back and forth to channel all of this anger into.

“Don’t you realize how fucked up this is?”

She loathes the way her mother meets her eyes and doesn’t say anything. That’s the worst part of all of this, probably — that she can tell Sandra did this because she thought it was up to her to decide.

It would be easier to be mad at her mother if she did it out of spite.

Rebeka doesn’t cry. She isn’t even sad, really. She hides in her room for a few days, fucking pissed at Sandra, and apparently her not going to school is no longer an issue, now that she’s not doing it to see a boy her mother doesn’t like.

By the time the much-anticipated move finally goes ahead, Rebeka has almost forgotten about Nano and his stupid fucking jawline. There are more important things to worry about now. She spends all summer reinventing herself, making sure her fashion choices reflect the reckless, no-nonsense girl from the wrong side of the tracks vibes she wants to give off at school. It’s kind of fun, actually, to get to play a character like that. She’s rational and mostly keeps her mouth shut — the Rebeka that Las Encinas is about to meet definitely won’t be.

If she’s gonna be stuck hanging out with the future leaders of tomorrow, she’s gonna make sure she sticks out like a sore thumb doing it. Nano would be so proud.

Her first day there, some scruffy looking kid almost gets beaten up, and she befriends him before she knows who he is.

She always did like underdogs.

**  
  
There’s such a thing as cognitive dissonance — she knew the princess gown was the wrong call, but on Halloween you’re allowed to be whoever you want to be. Maybe she wanted to feel like a girly girl for a few hours.  
  
Tonight’s been utterly fucked. She hates everyone at this party, including herself, a little.  
  
Now she’s up in her room, drunk but not drunk enough to forget, and for the first time in a while she finds herself wondering about what Nano might be up to. Well — there’s that, too — she doesn’t have to wonder anymore. Samuel has been a vast source of knowledge.  
  
Really, she’s just wondering if she should hit him up sometime. Her silly little crush on his brother isn’t going anywhere, so she might as well go for the original.  
  
The door opens, and before she can yell at whatever drunk couple to go find a different place to hook up in, she comes face to face with none other than Michael Myers himself — a little cliché, maybe, but she’ll bite.  
  
The mask comes off and she’s left staring.  
  
He sounds entirely too casual when he asks, “What’s up, Rebeka?”  
  
Oh. Well. Is that how they’re gonna play this? She doesn’t let the surprise show on her face. He looks good; older, but probably none the wiser.  
  
She smirks, all practiced ease from months of encounters with classmates she despises, then allows herself to look him up and down.  
  
“Not much, as you can see,” she says, then walks away from him and towards her closet and doesn’t need to turn around to know he’s right behind her.  
  
There’s a small scar on his cheek now, from a fight maybe, or a freak fall, and she traces it with her finger in the dim light of the room, then grins at how fucking absurd all of this is.  
  
“It’s fucking criminal that you let someone do this to your perfect cheeks.”  
  
He laughs, low. “I’m not the one dressed like fucking Cinderella.”  
  
Yeah, they’re gonna get along just fine.


End file.
